On Armistice Day

As we mark the 100th anniversary of what its contemporaries knew as "the Great War" (World War I), I realize that I belong to the last generation which carries a live memory of people who survived that scarcely imaginable catastrophe. In 1914, Europe seemed on a path toward increased globalization and "modern" living -- a path from which it was derailed by carnage, at least through 1945 and perhaps more accurately through 1989. Within four years, a 19th century vision of "infinite progress" had been obliterated, 20 million soldiers and civilians were dead, and long established political polities had been swept away while novel, usually unstable, entities had been created.

... the last [US?] World War I veteran died in 2012. ... if Europe’s motto after World War II was “never again,” the lesson of World War I is “it could happen again.”

Katrin Bennhold, New York Times

To honor this anniversary, I want to call attention to a previous blog post.

Somewhat improbably, I was raised near an uncle, Stevan Idjidovic (who adopted the last name "Stevens" for the benefit of his English speaking relatives) who had served as a Serbian child soldier in that war. He told his wild story in a little memoir titled Snows of Serbia. This provides an intimate portrait of hardship and accidental survival that is still gripping. Here's how war came to his ethnically Serbian village which happened to be located within what were then Austro-Hungary's borders:

We could not understand why they were burning our Serbian village; we had been loyal subjects of the Empire for generations. "They are going to kill us," repeated Cika Krana .... We were all terrified by the realization that the village was being put to the torch and the people were being shot by our own soldiers. ...

... I happened to be the only male of adult size in the group. "You, come here!" I heard the Croat sergeant speak, his gaze fixed on me. As I was about to step forward I heard Mother plead "Oh don't, please don't," as she clutched my arm. I was afraid to step forward but realized I had no alternative. I broke loose from Mother’s grip and stepped forward facing the sergeant. He was about my height with blond hair and a well-groomed mustache, his steely blue eyes fixed on me. "What are you?" he demanded sternly, meaning what nationality was I. I was on the point of telling the truth but checked myself; I kept silent, realizing he wanted me to say, "I am a Serb".

... His rage was mounting and, raising his right hand, he struck a savage blow on my left ear. "This will teach you how to obey."

With my back turned to the soldiers, I walked away slowly and apprehensively. About halfway to the street corner a rifle shot rang out behind me and I stopped dead in my tracks. A bullet whizzed by me hitting the soft road ahead of me, raising the dust. I assumed it was meant for me, but why had it missed? I wheeled around. Instantly I learned that the bullet was not intended for me. There on the road I saw my father staggering slowly in my direction, bent over in pain.

Fourteen year old Stevan then escaped to Serbian army lines by swimming across the River Sava:

... I discarded everything except my underwear and my broad brimmed hat. This done I wasted no time and plunged into the cold water. ... I had hardly swum two hundred feet from shore when I heard the crack of rifle shots close by. ...

... It is said of the dying, or of a man about to die, that they experience flashes of memories of their whole life. Nothing of the sort happened to me. On the contrary, I was thinking of how my body would be eaten by the fishes. The volleys of bullets continued to splash around me. ...

Observing the [Serbian] shore as I came closer, I shuddered at an unbelievable sight. In the calm waters of the bend the current had deposited hundreds of bodies of Serbian soldiers who had fallen at the battle of Cevrntija two weeks earlier. Frightfully bloated and closely packed, the bridge of bodies extended out from the shore some twenty feet. There was no stench that I noticed, but the bodies did create a barrier to reaching the shore. ... With my head above the surface I figured the only way out of this was to dive underneath the bodies and go for the shore. Holding my breath I submerged and propelled myself slowly toward shore till my hands were digging into mud below and my back was feeling the weight of the bodies above. Heaving up through the bodies, I frantically pushed myself toward the bank and into a thicket of willows. I felt exhausted.

While catching my breath I wondered whether I had really made it. Having disturbed the closely packed balance of the corpses, I saw a few drift loose and begin their journey down the river. I was still lying hidden with my face buried in the willow thicket, trying to regain my strength, when a commanding voice boomed down from above me. “Come on up here!”

Stevan's story both illuminates how entrenched ethnic nationalist conflicts in the Balkans might persist to this day -- and illustrates the mad, meaningless serendipity which determines who lives once war tears civilized society into pieces.
...Though today marks the end of World War I in western Europe, we would do well to remember that the armistice on the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour, meant less than nothing in eastern and central Europe. The hostilities unleashed by the fall of the Austrian and Russian empires escalated for years in those regions. Robert Gerwarth tells that story in The Vanquished.
...And then there is that unhappy region we in the US and Europe call "the Middle East." The victorious European powers cut up the fragments of the Ottoman Empire, established "nations" defined more by lines on maps than affinities, began the process of implanting a Jewish state in land long occupied by indigenous others, and generally created a cauldron of seething enmities that persist still today. World War I never ended there either; and we scarcely noticed.