’Done My Bit’: British Soldiers, the 1918 Armistice, and Understanding the First World War

British soldiers greeted the Armistice on 11 November 1918 with mixed reactions, according to their various personal testimonies from the First World War. By integrating studies of how soldiers understood the war in 1918 with their reactions to and later remembrances of the Armistice, this study argues that an explanation for such mixed attitudes can be traced to the experience of combat in 1918 rather than a general sense of disillusionment with the war itself. In the end, soldiers mixed triumph and tragedy into the idea of having “done my bit” to articulate a positive interpretation of the conflict.