First Sentence

"It is just fifty years - within the lifetime of some who will read these words; for others, an age before they were born - since King George V wrote in his diary: 'The great day has come, and we have won the war'; to those who came through it the Great War, to us now the First World War. Britain, France, Italy, the USA and the other Allied Powers had granted Imperial Germany's request for an armistice: at 1100 on 11 November 1918, hostilities ceased on all fronts after four and a half years of devastating conflict."