Ryan Bridge: Remembering the first World War, 108 years on

11 o'clock, November 11th. 

Today marks 108 years since the end of the first World War. The Allies and Germany signed an armistice. 

It was finally all quiet on the Western Front. 

Think about the scale of it... we lost 18,000 in battle. 

Back then, our total population was just over a million. Pretty much every single family, every street, every town was mourning their dead. 

There was no social media, no phones, no live television. Most people found out the war was over the following day after telegrams and then the newspapers published it.  

The National Library keeps a record of this day. In Naseby, the small-town in central Otago, they lit a bonfire to celebrate. 

They lit it under an effigy of the Kaiser, which someone had put a bomb inside. It caught fire and blew off the Kaiser's head. 

It was a brutal war fought in trenches. Men lived with cold and hunger and rats, through European winters in snow with disease and despair.  

There's plenty of reason to bitch and moan in 2026, but life is a hell of a lot easier today than it was then. 

In New Zealand we have the luxury of taking peace for granted. The soldiers who fought and died then didn't.  

We owe them one.  

We live in a world where the chance of another major global conflict is higher than it's been in decades. And wars are fought much differently now.  

At 11 o'clock this morning, it can't hurt to take a minute to remember why they're such awful things to start, and lethal to end.