When war victims were soldiers

Some seventy heads of state have commemorated the centenary of the 1918 armistice that put a stop to four years of butchery on the Western front, where Europe’s youth had been relentlessly killed or mutilated, along with so many others from around the world. But the fighting did not end for everyone at 11:11 am on November 11^th. It went on in the Balkans, Ukraine and Eastern Siberia for a few more years. There was a pause, however, though the toll of colonial forced labour did not let up. And that pause was short. Less than a generation later the massacres were underway again. But this time it was not just young men in uniform who lost their lives or limbs. Aerial carpet bombing targeted whole populations, and so it has been ever since. What was commemorated in Paris with pomp and circumstance was the last time warfare killed more soldiers than civilians. (The flu epidemic that subsequently killed millions cannot be directly attributed to the conflict, though the war’s conclusion sent soldiers back home to spread the virus).