All Hostilities Will Cease
Shortly after 8 am on 11 November 1918, army telegraphist George Thomas was one of the first New Zealanders to learn that after four long years, the war was at an end.
An Armistice with Germany had been signed at 5.20 am that morning. Thomas took down the telegraph message, sent in Morse code, at his New Zealand Division signal station in northern France. He wrote it out in pencil, and when he was interviewed for radio some 50 years later in the 1960s, proudly showed the interviewer the original pencil and message form, which he had kept.
Year:1918 (recorded 1966)
Location:France
All Hostilities Will Cease
Shortly after 8 am on 11 November 1918, army telegraphist George Thomas was one of the first New Zealanders to learn that after four long years, the war was at an end.
An Armistice with Germany had been signed at 5.20 am that morning. Thomas took down the telegraph message, sent in Morse code, at his New Zealand Division signal station in northern France. He wrote it out in pencil, and when he was interviewed for radio some 50 years later in the 1960s, proudly showed the interviewer the original pencil and message form, which he had kept.
Year: 1918 (recorded 1966)
Length: 0:01:54
Production Company: Radio New Zealand
Source: Radio New Zealand Collection, Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision
Catalogue Reference: 247165 Interview with Sapper George Thomas
People: George Thomas
Location: France
Tags: 1918, 1966, WWI, World War One, Armistice, Armistice Day, George Thomas, France, telegraph, morse code, New Zealand Division, New Zealand, New Zealanders, Germany, Hauraki Regiment, Le Quesnoy, Māori Pioneer Battalion, Spanish Influenza
Subject: End of the War, Armistice, Armistice Day
Image Title: Headlines in The Southland Times newspaper, 11 November 1918.
Image Source: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ST19181111.2.23
In the field, the reactions of men to the news of the Armistice appears to have varied quite widely, according to recorded recollections held in the sound archives of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision.
At Le Quesnoy, Bob Robertson of the Hauraki Regiment recalled that despite promising themselves they would celebrate and get ‘blind drunk’ when the war ended, when the time came, the New Zealand men were so tired, they just looked at each other and said “What do you think of that?”. However, George Nicholas of the Māori Pioneer Battalion remembered dancing with the French civilians, “I’ve never done so much dancing in my life”, he recalled.(1)
For the men in France, as well as their families at home, the Armistice coincided with the outbreak of the terrible Spanish Influenza epidemic, which dampened many official celebrations marking that the Great War was finally at an end.
(1) Bob Robertson and George Nicholas in He Rerenga Kōrero 1985-04-25