In July 2007 my wife and myself were visiting a friend in Compiegne, northern France. One of the must-see places there is the "Clearing in the forest" where the allies and the Germans agreed to end the first world war in November 1918. The Armistice was signed in a railway carriage that was part of Marshall Foche's train, parked on a military branch line in the Compiegne Forest. The carriage is an adapted dining car of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons Lits et des Grandes Express Européens. In 1940 Hitler insisted on getting it out again to sign the French surrender. The original was destroyed in an allied air raid over Germany but the carriage in the museum is one of the same series. They have built a museum around the carriage.

Inside, the tables are set out with the places of the main participants marked. Facsimiles of the documents are there, and even an ashtray claimed to contain a cigar butt smoked by Foche. I found it curious that, although the French and British were represented on the allied side, there was no mention of any Americans. Were there none at the Armistice talks?

In the museum there are graphic images of the horrors of the war with a series of photograph collections of many aspects of the war.

Outside the museum there are huge memorials to French "gloire" and especially to Marshall Foche, who was the supreme commander on the allied side. Personally, I wished there had been some mention of the European Union whose main purpose is to prevent this kind of horror ever happening again.