At 11am that same day, the guns on the Western Front fell silent and, after four and half years of misery, death and destruction, the war was finally over. The following day, people all over Ireland celebrated what the editorial in the Cork Examiner described as the “end of Armageddon”.

The First World War was one of the most significant and catastrophic events of the 20th century. It shaped the world we live in today and led to the deaths of 18,000,000 people, the collapse of four empires, the creation of the first communist state, the rise of the US as a military superpower.

It also removed the potential for civil war that existed in Ireland in the summer of 1914 over the issue of Home Rule, split the Irish Volunteers, created the conditions that led to the 1916 Rising, and resulted in the demise of the Irish Parliamentary Party.

After Britain declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914, thousands of men from all parts of Ireland got caught up in the patriotic euphoria that was sweeping through Europe and rushed to enlist in the British armed forces. Others would soon follow.

Their motives for doing so varied. Many listened to the advice of their political leaders who urged them to fight against the ‘threat to civilisation’ and for the ‘freedom of small nations’, others did so out of a sense of adventure, while still more enlisted to escape poverty.

Whatever their reasons for enlisting, the majority who joined the British Army entered one of the infantry regiments that were then based in Ireland.

In the first months of the war, battalions from these regiments were grouped into three divisions: The 10th and 16th (Irish) Divisions, which consisted for the most part of Catholic and nationalist recruits, and the 36th (Ulster) Division whose members were almost all Protestant and unionist.

In all, more than 200,000 Irishmen would serve in the British Army during the war. Thousands more would serve in the Royal Flying Corps, Royal Navy, and Mercantile Marine, while countless others would serve in the armed forces of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the US.

These men would fight and die on the muddy and bloody battlefields of France, Flanders, Gallipoli, and Salonika, in the skies above those battlefields and on the high seas.

The Irishmen who fought in the war often had to endure appalling conditions and thousands would lose their lives or suffer horrendous wounds.

Hundreds of crew members and civilians also perished when the ships they were travelling on fell victim to Germany’s campaign of submarine warfare.

It is impossible to quantify the exact number of Irish deaths but it is estimated to be between 40,000 and 50,000. In terms of loss of life, this was the greatest tragedy to hit Ireland since the Famine 70 years earlier.

One hundred years after the Armistice, that may seem like a mere statistic, but it is important to remember each death was an individual tragedy that affected families all over Ireland.

While Irishmen were doing the fighting and dying, Irish women were also supporting the war effort in many different ways.

Irish nurses served at the front with organisations such as the Voluntary Aid Detachment and the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service, while others cared for the hundreds of wounded servicemen that were sent to hospitals all over the Ireland.

Women were also employed in shell factories, looked after groups of Belgian refugees or supported the troops at the front by sending them socks, scarves, and other luxuries.

The conflict would also have serious political consequences in Ireland. Although many nationalists initially supported the war, Britain’s execution and arrest of republicans in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising, its refusal to keep faith with Ireland and grant Home Rule, its threat to extend conscription to Ireland, and the increasing number of Irish casualties led to a gradual erosion of that support.

By the time the conflict ended, the Irish people had enough and this would be manifested in the sweeping victory of Sinn Féin in the general election held on December 14, 1918.

Whether they served on the front lines or lived on the Home Front, the lives of people all over Ireland were changed in some way by the Great War. While many were happy to support it when it broke out, all were glad to see it end.

In the weeks and months that followed the Armistice, thousands of demobilised veterans returned home scarred by their experience of war and to a country that had dramatically changed.

Many of these veterans were proud of the contribution they made and were happy that they had fought the good fight, others were disillusioned by their experience and went on to fight for an independent Ireland, while more just focused on rebuilding their shattered lives.

In time, the names of those Irish servicemen who lost their lives in the war would be inscribed on headstones in the cemeteries opened close to where they fell or on a nearby memorial if their remains were not recovered.

Some next of kin and family members were fortunate enough to visit these locations after the war but the majority of those left behind simply couldn’t afford to do so.

They would go to their deaths without a sense of closure and all they had to sustain them in their grief was memories.

The editorial in the Cork Examiner that had described the Armistice as the “end of Armageddon” finished by saying:

Out of the appalling tragedy that has ended in the triumph of the Allied cause it is hoped that a new and better world will evolve in which reason will supersede mere brute force, and justice to all nations, large and small will be administered with an impartial hand.

Sadly, it was not to be. Within one year Ireland would once again be at war, this time fighting to establish an independent republic.

In Europe, dark forces would soon arise and 20 years after the Armistice the world would once again be facing Armageddon.

Gerry White is a military historian