All over the world (except the United States), this date, November 11th, is solemnly commemorated as Armistice Day. On the eleventh day of November, 1918, at the eleventh hour, the guns fell silent across Europe as World War I, the so-called "War To End All Wars", finally ground to a halt.
Both of my grandparents fought in that war. My paternal grandfather and his wife came to live with my mother and father in their declining years (as was common in an earlier generation - they weren't dumped into old-age homes). One of my earliest memories was of my grandfather's constant hacking cough, the result of injuries sustained from a German gas attack on the trenches during that war. His lungs never fully recovered, and the injury shortened his life appreciably. Thus, even though the war had finished decades before I was born, it still touched my memory. He died when I was three or four years old, I don't recall precisely which. The house was somehow very still without his coughing . . .
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Peter
9 comments:
I don't like admitting that I forgot about today.
Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and those of us in the maritime trade spent the day scaring the young with stories of the Fitz, the Marine Electric and the El Faro, the other US Merchant ships that were lost in the last 50 years. Only one got a catchy song, though.
It's an odd feeling, that my knowledge of WW1 is about on par with my son's knowledge of WWII. There's a disconnect given the intervening time that only gets moderated by focused study.
So we've had all these armed conflicts and two world wars last century, so exactly what freedoms have been preserved? What freedoms as an American do I have today that a post WWII American did not? Being able to attend repulsive trannie pride parades does not count. What freedoms did an early 1960 American have that I do not now have? I'll wait for answer.
My dad served in Korea in a support role and I had three uncles from dad's side serve in WWII in support roles.
So we now have a federal government in America that can impose a questionable vaccine upon us, tell us what gun we can buy with their approval, and IRS that search records without a warrant, a government that has openly murdered people (Ruby Ridge, Waco, and others). Britain, a once great country, is not a joke in terms of civil liberties. But hey, German nationalist mustache man was a bad dude along with his "bro" Mussolini. Stalin somehow always gets a pass.
https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/supreme-court-irs-can-secretly-obtain-bank-records
Thank you for mentioning your grandad. What a terrible price. My mentor’s brother was buried alive when a shell collapsed the bunker he was in. He was eventually rescued, but was a changed man after that. She mentioned it in passing. He became a Biblical scholar after that war. And could never stand being in a closed room….
I was born in 1962, so my father and almost all of the men in my neighborhood were WW2 veterans (or, for the young ones, Korea.) Still, World War One always had a heightened sense of realism to me, as if it were closer in time to me than Round Two. Perhaps it was my neighbor, Mr. Whitehead, who had flown a Sopwith Camel with the RFC, or my grandfather, who served aboard USS Wyoming on blockade duty in the North Sea. To this day I think of November 11 as Armistice Day, and my wife and I watch "The Fighting 69th."
The end of Jim Crow.
A Texan - very well said. All four of my sons' grandfathers fought in WWI. My late father in law was a career Army officer and Vietnam vet. My husband and I both initially worked for the fedgov in foreign affairs.
And we now both agree it was all for NOTHING. A waste of time and lives, all to celebrate the triumph of sexual deviancy and destruction of everything that once made Western Civilization great. There is nothing left in AINO worth preserving, as the great replacement steam rolls what remains of our people, culture, and history. Freedom sacrificed for the lie of 'equality' and independence for the lie of 'security.'
Well, if you live in the South, you have the freedom to not discriminate against people based on skin color.
As to law enforcement shenanigans, they were much worse in the 1950s and 1960s than they are now. Sorry.
My grandpa was on a ship to France when the war ended. He told of fellow soldiers on the ship who died from the flu and were buried at sea.
Very, very, moving.
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