Armistice Day Remembered

Veterans honored at the Fredonia Heritage Day festival, November 3, 2018

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them on proclamations that were slapped up over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stock yards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates. – Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

"I hate war, as only a soldier who has lived it can, as only one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. – General Dwight Eisenhower

Today, November 11, 2018, is my 83rd birthday. And the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, ending World War I. When I was a child November 11 was still celebrated as Armistice Day, so I never had to go to school on my birthday. Now the 11th is Veterans Day. Although still a holiday, it is very different from the original Armistice Day. Back then, that "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" was designated as “a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated."

 After World War II, the U.S. Congress decided to rebrand November 11 as Veterans Day. Honoring the warrior then quickly morphed into honoring the military and  in effect glorifying war. You can't have a Veterans Day without veterans. Armistice Day represented the hope that we would have no more veterans.

  

I took the above photo, choosing not to hand my camera off and go join the lineup of veterans. I was wearing my Veterans for Peace hat, and Hemingway's words were ringing in my head. I had read that novel of World War I when I was in high school, and that passage especially stuck with me. Although it took me many years, along the way becoming a veteran myself, to try seriously to change my life accordingly. To become a "Veteran for Peace." (See veteransforpeace.org/take-action/armistice-day)