Eleventh

 On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918

the guns fell silent on the battlefields of the Great War, on land and at sea. Millions lay dead, countries were upended and subjected to revolution. 

The war to end all wars. 

Fast forward twenty years and ten months, to September 1939, and it started all over again. World War II did not come to a proper end until nearly six years later, after an atomic bomb vaporised the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

The war to end all wars. 

Well, Korea, Suez, Vietnam, the Middle East, the Balkans, Ukraine followed. 

Lest we forget what sacrifices were made to safeguard our freedoms. Fragile as though it may be.