In the USA this date is known as Veterans Day. It's an official public holiday celebrating all who have rendered military service, but the emphasis is on those who are still alive (the dead are more properly commemorated on Memorial Day).
However, to much of the rest of the world - and to me - it's Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day, or Poppy Day. The guns fell silent on the Western Front at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, bringing to an end the so-called 'War To End All Wars'. One of my grandfathers was there, and suffered to the end of his life from the damage inflicted upon his lungs by poison gas in the trenches.
I have my own comrades in arms and lost friends to remember today. I've written about them before, here, and here, and in other posts linked in those articles. I won't repeat their stories today. If you haven't read them before, you might like to click on those links and learn more about them. Their memory is dear to me.
Lest we forget . . .
May their souls rest in peace, and may their sins be forgiven them.
Peter
1 comment:
I've always been conflicted about 'In Flanders Fields', and wondered would he have written the same last verse in 1918 as he did in 1915?
But then, that is the problem with WWI and its millions dead...it required WWII to at least, sort of, resolve the conflict and to redeem that faith. Though, one might argue that was a Pyrrhic victory, certainly nothing was the same.
On another note, I remain fascinated by the difference in meaning between 'Veteran's Day' and 'Armistice Day'. It's the latter, in my mind.
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