Veterans Day
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918 the guns fell silent. The Great War, The War to End All Wars, was over…for a couple of decades.
The red poppies of Flanders fields became a symbol of that war and the veterans that returned from it. Known as Remembrance Day in much of the world, the poppies will be in evidence. Remembrance Day observances have more in common with the American Memorial Day as a day to honor those who have died in war.
First called Armistice Day in the United States, the name was changed to Veterans Day, and its purpose changed to honoring those who are serving, or have served in the military. The change was made to avoid a conflict with the existing Memorial Day observance that goes back to the Civil War era.
A heart felt salute to everyone who managed to survive basic training. We can hope that sooner, rather than later, there will be no need for another generation to put on uniforms.
2 comments
My thanks as always to you, Bryan, and to those who served with you. If I didn’t write a Veterans Day post of my own this year, you can blame Eleanor Roosevelt, whose autobiography I’m reading at the moment (the one-volume version for dummies like me, not the three-volume tome for real historians).
Mrs. Roosevelt was, without question, fundamentally opposed to war, notwithstanding all her actual work on behalf of our troops. At several points in the autobiography she remarks on the human cost and the waste of resources of every sort. She was able to write this only because she was writing quite some years after W.W.II was over; even so, she received many accusations from the press and media (and of course American political opponents) of being a Commie, which was particularly ironic considering her service at the UN: chair of Human Rights Commission and eventually chair of the US delegation. In both roles, goodness knows she faced down enough endlessly propagandizing Soviet officials. But apparently having any association with the UN, then as now, brings out the nut-jobs throwing sharp objects. In over half a century, nothing seems to have changed, except the demise of the Soviet Union…
My father, who is of course my all-time favorite American veteran (gunnery officer on a troop landing ship on D-Day, among other occasions; carried shrapnel in his arm to prove it), used to recite a surely apocryphal “quote” falsely attributed to FDR by his opponents:
Of those three statements, I’d be willing to believe the first; there is incontrovertible evidence in print for the second… and damned little evidence for the third, especially as Eleanor was tutored by the most adept Democratic advisers of her era into surely the most effective political spouse in history. No wonder the RWNJs of the age made up sh!t about her!
I appreciate it, Steve. Service is something that is part of my family’s tradition.
Eleanor Roosevelt was a prime mover for the establishment of the UN, with a hope that it would correct all of the problems that were inherent in the League of Nations. She was one of my Mother’s heroes, and was considered more intelligent than her husband. She was tireless in her efforts during and before the war to make things better for the average citizen.
Politically, the Republicans had to attack her, but it never really worked for them.