美国国家公共电台 NPR 100 Years Ago, A U.S. Pilot Saw An 'End To The Sorrow' On Armistice Day（在线收听）

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

On this day 100 years ago, Allies of World War I and Germany laid down their arms. In this audio recording from 1975 of Army Air Corps pilot Fenton Caldwell, he remembers the exact moment.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

FENTON CALDWELL: Where was I on Monday, November 11, 1918 at 11 a.m? I was at about 10,000 feet in the air, flying a De Havilland DH-4 airplane...

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Caldwell was flying a reconnaissance mission over Bordeaux, France, oblivious to the fact that the armistice had begun. More from his story in a moment. But now let's introduce his niece, Joy Panagides. She brought this family audio treasure to our attention. And she joins us now in the studio. Welcome.

JOY PANAGIDES: Thank you.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Tell us about your Uncle Fenton.

PANAGIDES: Uncle Fenton was my favorite uncle. He had wonderful stories. And he enchanted everybody in the family with his very good memory for details.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So what happened as he looked down over Bordeaux?

PANAGIDES: He was looking at where there might be enemy installations, where there might be any evidence of firing of guns - different places so that this could be reported back to their base. The way they got information from home base was somebody would lay out sheets - white sheets on the ground...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

CALDWELL: And which was all spelled out in little code books, which were in the hands of the lieutenant in the airplane, as well in the hands of those at the command post on the ground...

PANAGIDES: The airplane didn't have any kind of radio contact with him. So these pieces of white cloth were laid out on the ground with a code that meant something.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

CALDWELL: At about 11 a.m., we began getting no changes in the panels on the ground. And in fact, we could not see people running around. And I decided to head for a field at Cazaux, which was a French gunnery school.

PANAGIDES: People that should have been coming out - because it was an American plane on a French field - they didn't come out to see who it was and why they were down.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

CALDWELL: We saw no one around, not a soul on the field. It was deserted as if some epidemic had hit the field and wiped out all the inhabitants. However, after walking a few hundred yards down the road beside the hangars and the office, we could hear noise up ahead, a great amount of cheering and hooping and singing. And we went up to a French cafe. And here was everybody, every inhabitant of that flying field, Frenchmen who were yelling and throwing their arms in the air. And above it all, every now and then, we would hear one expression - (speaking French) - the war is over. The war is over. And this was the way I learned that the armistice had been signed.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: World War I, of course, was a truly horrific war, as you know. What did your Uncle Fenton tell you about it? How did he process the experience?

PANAGIDES: All during this time, he had problems, as they all did, with staying alive.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Of course.

PANAGIDES: The plane that he was in mostly - the DH-4 - it's a De Havilland - was a very precarious airplane and was known as the fiery coffin. People were falling to their deaths.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: It was incredibly dangerous what he...

PANAGIDES: Incredibly...

GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...Was doing.

PANAGIDES: ...Dangerous. That was one of the problems. The other one was because they were doing reconnaissance flights, they were targets for the enemy.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: What did your uncle say about Armistice Day and what it meant to him?

PANAGIDES: Oh. I do have a piece that's from him that I'd like to just say because he realized that Americans had different meanings for Armistice Day. But for him, the most important part was that - he says, (reading) now I was free from that ever-present conscious or unconscious knowledge that there was a chance of not living another day, the end to the sorrow of seeing close friends go down - some in flames - and to those funerals I had gone with a heavy heart to stand at attention during the firing of rifles and the hearing of the mournful notes of tap.

So he was incredibly encouraged and grateful, I would think. This was important.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: He was a wonderful writer. And thank you so much for bringing his words to us now.

PANAGIDES: Thank you for letting us share this.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: That was Joy Panagides. She kindly shared a recording of her uncle Fenton Caldwell and his memories of Armistice Day 1918. You can hear the full recording on our website - npr.org.

(SOUNDBITE OF LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA PERFORMANCE OF WALTON'S "PASSACAGLIA: THE DEATH OF FALSTAFF")