Veteran's Day
The "Great War" ended in 1918 "on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month" with an armistice between the involved nations. The next year, the peace was made official with the Treaty of Versailles.
The world at the time did not recall any such carnage to compare to the years of bloodshed they had just gone through. It was a very interesting time for our world, we were in transition from the slower paced life of the 19th century and about to jump in over our heads to the manufacturing age. WW1 brought us from massed infantry tactics into a more modern, lethal age of trench warfare, automatic weapons, fighter planes and poison gas. A new Hell on Earth that was so traumatizing that they thought we would never repeat it.
In our collection, we have a letter home from a soldier who was "over there". In it, he describes to a friend back home who works for B&M Railroad how rough life is and how complete the destruction is. He declares that if the workers at home would see the things that he had seen, they would never complain about trivial things again.
As I write this, I'm looking through a magazine intitled "The Illustrated War News". It is dated September 19. 1917. The front cover has a photo of a French bicycle soldier who is wearing a wicker backpack. The pack is a portable carrier pigeon coop. They were still communicating with carrier pigeons, yet killing each other with airplanes, machine guns and tanks.
Inside the magazine there are a wide assortment of illustrations showing various scenes from the war. The centerspread is a scene of an unnamed battlefield. The ground that so many fought and died over is nothing but a vast expanse of mud, shell holes, flooded trenches and a bombed-out factory off in the distance.
On November 11, 1919, President Wilson proclaimed the first "Armistice Day" with the following words: "To us in America, the reflections of armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…". We were to honor our veterans with a two minute halt to commerce at 11AM.
In 1921, Congress declared the day to be a Federal holiday. They voted to establish a "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier" in Arlington National Cemetery of that year and did so with a ceremony held on Nov. 11th.
Who would have guessed that the "War to end all wars" had a sequel? World War Two came and went, with the Korean Conflict close on it's heels. Apparently the "Great War" was not enough to scare the civilized world into not repeating it.
With a whole new generation of veterans to honor, the old Armistice Day was officially changed to Veterans Day in 1954 by President Eisenhower. "Ike" had been in the army during WW1, but he was kept stateside to train troops the new machines called "tanks". The training field was on the hallowed ground of the Gettysburg battlefield, where there had been 58,000 American casualties in three days in 1863. Later he would go on to be the Supreme Allied Commander for all forces in Europe.
We must never forget what our Veterans have done for us. This thought extends to ALL veterans, from the colonial era through the present day. When I was a kid, it seemed like all of the older guys in the neighborhood had fought in WW2. Most of them are dead now. My daughter is four years old, and it is doubtful that she will have a chance to have a meaningful conversation with a WW2 vet by the time she is old enough to remember it. It is now our resposibility, as historians and collectors to teach the next generation of Americans about the sacrifice that was made for us by those that went before. It inspires me to organize our collection of military artifacts in such a way that it can speak for itself someday.
War is an unavoidable byproduct of human nature, and we can only hope that our future will never again see the horrors of the kind of war that we have seen in the 20th Century. America is THE world's superpower, and may we never again have to see the devastation of WW2, the "total warfare" of WW2 or anything else on that scale, and may we never forget the men and women who made our security possible.
Remember that tonight as we go to sleep in our warm, dry beds that there are thousands of Americans deployed around the globe in a new kind of war, a war on terrorism. Some of them will die today. We owe a debt to every person in uniform, and the next time you bump into a soldier, remember to thank them for their service. Hold the door for them, offer them your seat on the bus. Say "thank you" and mean it. Remember that they are the front line of our freedom, that part of their job description is to lay down their life for us and that far too many have had to do just that.
The world at the time did not recall any such carnage to compare to the years of bloodshed they had just gone through. It was a very interesting time for our world, we were in transition from the slower paced life of the 19th century and about to jump in over our heads to the manufacturing age. WW1 brought us from massed infantry tactics into a more modern, lethal age of trench warfare, automatic weapons, fighter planes and poison gas. A new Hell on Earth that was so traumatizing that they thought we would never repeat it.
In our collection, we have a letter home from a soldier who was "over there". In it, he describes to a friend back home who works for B&M Railroad how rough life is and how complete the destruction is. He declares that if the workers at home would see the things that he had seen, they would never complain about trivial things again.
As I write this, I'm looking through a magazine intitled "The Illustrated War News". It is dated September 19. 1917. The front cover has a photo of a French bicycle soldier who is wearing a wicker backpack. The pack is a portable carrier pigeon coop. They were still communicating with carrier pigeons, yet killing each other with airplanes, machine guns and tanks.
Inside the magazine there are a wide assortment of illustrations showing various scenes from the war. The centerspread is a scene of an unnamed battlefield. The ground that so many fought and died over is nothing but a vast expanse of mud, shell holes, flooded trenches and a bombed-out factory off in the distance.
On November 11, 1919, President Wilson proclaimed the first "Armistice Day" with the following words: "To us in America, the reflections of armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…". We were to honor our veterans with a two minute halt to commerce at 11AM.
In 1921, Congress declared the day to be a Federal holiday. They voted to establish a "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier" in Arlington National Cemetery of that year and did so with a ceremony held on Nov. 11th.
Who would have guessed that the "War to end all wars" had a sequel? World War Two came and went, with the Korean Conflict close on it's heels. Apparently the "Great War" was not enough to scare the civilized world into not repeating it.
With a whole new generation of veterans to honor, the old Armistice Day was officially changed to Veterans Day in 1954 by President Eisenhower. "Ike" had been in the army during WW1, but he was kept stateside to train troops the new machines called "tanks". The training field was on the hallowed ground of the Gettysburg battlefield, where there had been 58,000 American casualties in three days in 1863. Later he would go on to be the Supreme Allied Commander for all forces in Europe.
We must never forget what our Veterans have done for us. This thought extends to ALL veterans, from the colonial era through the present day. When I was a kid, it seemed like all of the older guys in the neighborhood had fought in WW2. Most of them are dead now. My daughter is four years old, and it is doubtful that she will have a chance to have a meaningful conversation with a WW2 vet by the time she is old enough to remember it. It is now our resposibility, as historians and collectors to teach the next generation of Americans about the sacrifice that was made for us by those that went before. It inspires me to organize our collection of military artifacts in such a way that it can speak for itself someday.
War is an unavoidable byproduct of human nature, and we can only hope that our future will never again see the horrors of the kind of war that we have seen in the 20th Century. America is THE world's superpower, and may we never again have to see the devastation of WW2, the "total warfare" of WW2 or anything else on that scale, and may we never forget the men and women who made our security possible.
Remember that tonight as we go to sleep in our warm, dry beds that there are thousands of Americans deployed around the globe in a new kind of war, a war on terrorism. Some of them will die today. We owe a debt to every person in uniform, and the next time you bump into a soldier, remember to thank them for their service. Hold the door for them, offer them your seat on the bus. Say "thank you" and mean it. Remember that they are the front line of our freedom, that part of their job description is to lay down their life for us and that far too many have had to do just that.
posted by MVTCoPete | 11:09 PM
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