By Andrew Philips
Colchester historian

ON November 10, 1918, Colchester knew.

This was a garrison town.

Its MP was a government minister. News of an Armistice at the 11th hour, the 11th day of the 11th month soon spread.

Crowds gathered outside the Town Hall.

Inside, the council was holding its quarterly meeting, the first for the new mayor, Councillor George Wright, the successful Crouch Street caterer.

In 1918, new mayors took office in the first week of November.

As the town hall clock struck 11, the council sprang to their feet and sang the national anthem.

Then out onto the balcony to confront the crowd.

As if by magic, three Army buglers climbed out of a window, stood on the window sill 30 feet up, and sounded a fanfare.

The new mayor addressed the crowd. It was his Neil Armstrong moment...and he didn’t have a microphone.

“Fellow citizens rejoice with me this day, the greatest day in the world’s history. An Armistice has been signed.”

That phrase “the Greatest Day in World History” tells us a lot.

Just five months before they had heard we might lose the war.

Germany’s great offensive was working. Plans to evacuate Colchester were revived, as the previous mayor, Councillor Jarmin, received this from London: “Colchester citizens must nerve themselves for great sacrifice...evacuate the civilian population and if the grave hour comes, let the enemy find Colchester a barren desert.”

So among the great and the good, the main response to the Armistice was relief and exhaustion.

Nor was Councillor Jarmin, now Deputy Mayor, on the balcony.

His son, who survived being gassed at Ypres, had just died from the bird ‘flu pandemic, followed by his wife hours later.

Armistice rejoicing was overshadowed by the news that soldiers were dying in the Military Hospital at the rate of 10 a day, 162 in November alone.

Nevertheless rejoicing took place all that evening, with dancing in High Street and letting off fireworks.

No one drank the pubs dry, few of them had any beer.

For weeks it had been scarce and watered down. Street lights went on again, except that many no longer worked.

The General Election planned for December was overshadowed by growing trade union unrest – inflation had eroded the value of wages.

It introduced votes for some women, but equally votes for all men, the workingmen’s demand for more than 100 years.

Very slowly life resumed. In dribs and drabs, the boys came home.

Except that many did not. The Glorious Dead were Colchester’s Great War contribution.

About half our adult male population had served and perhaps 20 per cent died (accurate figures do not exist) while another 10 per cent had life-changing injuries.

This compares with a national mortality of 11.5 11 and a half per cent.

And there was no land fit for heroes, no war to end wars.

Most lived to see the next conflict. Widespread unemployment descended on Colchester which never recovered its pre-war prosperity.

No wonder the town paid for one of the finest war memorials in England.

And every November, “at the going down of the sun...” we remember them again.

  •  Colchester in the Great War by Andrew Philips is now on sale in all local bookshops.