At 11:00 a.m. on November 11, 1918 — the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month — the guns fell silent on the Western Front. The Armistice between the Allied powers and Germany brought an end to more than four years of fighting that had killed approximately 10 million soldiers and millions of civilians.
The Armistice was signed at 5:10 a.m. in a railway carriage in the Forest of Compiègne, north of Paris. Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the Supreme Allied Commander, and the German delegation agreed to terms that included the immediate cessation of hostilities, German withdrawal from occupied territories, surrender of war materiel, and Allied occupation of the Rhineland.
For the soldiers and support workers at the front, the Armistice brought an overwhelming mix of emotions: relief, joy, disbelief, and grief for those who had not survived. Margaret Sheldon was near Châtel-Chéhéry in the Argonne when the news came. Her November 1918 diary entry captures the extraordinary moment — the sudden silence after months of constant artillery, the celebrations, and the quiet remembrance of the fallen.
The Armistice was not a formal peace treaty — that would come with the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919. But November 11, 1918, marked the effective end of the Great War. It is commemorated today as Veterans Day in the United States, Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth nations, and Armistice Day in France and Belgium.
Diary of a World War I Donut Girl 