The signing of the Armistice, November 11th 1918 (colour litho)

From left to right are German Admiral Ernst Vanselow, Count Alfred von Oberndorff (1870-1963) of the Foreign Ministry, German General Detlof von Winterfeldt (with helmet), British naval officer Captain John Peter Ralph Marriott CMG (1879¿1938), and standing in front of the table, Matthias Erzberger (1875¿1921), head of the German delegation. Behind the table are two British naval officers, Admiral Sir George Price Webley Hope KCB KCMG (1869-1959) , Admiral of the Fleet Rosslyn Erskine Wemyss, 1st Baron Wester Wemyss GCB, CMG, MVO (1864-1933), and the French representatives, Marshal Ferdinand Foch (standing), and General Maxime Weygand (1867-1965).The armistice was signed in a carriage of Foch's private train, ("Le Wagon de l'Armistice"). It was later put back into regular service with the Compagnie des Wagons-Lits, but after a short period it was withdrawn to be attached to the French presidential train. From April 1921 to April 1927, the train was on exhibition in the Cour des Invalides in Paris. In November 1927, it was ceremonially returned to the forest in the exact spot where the Armistice was signed. There it remained, a monument to the defeat of the Kaiser¿s Germany, until 22 June 1940, when swastika-bedecked German staff cars bearing Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop and others swept into the Clairiere and, in that same carriage, demanded and received the surrender armistice from France. During the Occupation of France, the Clairiere de l¿Armistice was destroyed and the carriage taken to Berlin, where it was exhibited in the Lustgarten. After the Allied advance into Germany in early 1945, the carriage was removed by the Germans for safe keeping to the town of Ohrdruf, but as an American armoured column entered the town, the detachment of the SS guarding it set it ablaze, and it was destroyed.