Voices of the Armistace

[Pat Holscher]

The British National Archives ran, apparently last year, a radio series called "Voices of the Armistice", which is now available as a podcast. You can download it on Itunes for free.

I've listened to about 3/4s of it, which consists of reports from dairies. Some are official unit diaries, some private diaries kept in contravention to official orders. Pretty interesting.

Concerning the focus of this page, cavalry shows up a fair amount in the early diaries, either in the form of British infantry reporting that they'd seen some British cavalry, or been warned of something by cavalrymen, or occasionally in that German cavalry had been spotted or even engaged.

For American audiences, one thing that can't help but come through in the readings from Haig's diaries is a subdued but pretty obvious contempt for the American Army, which he obviously regarded as worthless. That'll raise some hackles for an American audience, but perhaps gives an insight to the divide that existed in thinking between the US and its European Allies, which has continued to color how the war is viewed in the US and Europe today.