11/11/11, 1918 - 2018

One hundred years ago today in Compiegne, France (1918), on the eleventh day, in the eleventh month, at eleven o’clock in the morning, hostilities ceased with the signing of the Armistice of World War I (called The Great War back in the day) and proclaimed by some as “the war to end all wars.”  It wasn’t, it didn’t!  Nearly 5 million Americans were in uniform in the “great” war and almost 117,000 were killed.  There are some 25 cemeteries on foreign soil where over 218,000 American soldiers and civilians of WWI and WWII are buried.  Wave after wave of white crosses and Stars of David markers indicate their final resting places.  I’ve walked through several of these cemeteries, in the United Kingdom, Belgium and the Netherlands, and I have read my  own name etched on a cross or two, but with a different birth date.  I cannot express the overwhelming sense of sadness I felt as I walked that hallowed ground.

Armistice Day—11/11/11, 2018—now called Veterans Day.  This year marks the 65th Veterans Day observance here in the United States.  President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued the first “Veterans Day Proclamation.”  In 1954, after World War II (the greatest mobilization of soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen in U.S. history and after the Korean war), the word “Armistice” was dropped and the word “Veterans” inserted to honor all veterans of all wars.

Veterans Day—11/11/11, 2018—formerly Armistice Day will include, on this eleventh day of the eleventh month and at the eleventh hour, a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  The Washington National Cathedral will hold a service at 10 a.m. and a National Veterans Day Concert will be held there at 5 p.m. 

“Peace is currently losing ground every day,” said French President Macron as he announced the centennial celebrations in France for Armistice Day.  Catriona Pennell, associate professor of history at the University of Exeter in England wrote:  “Today, in an age of rising nationalism that ridicules [these institutions for] being ‘global’ in outlook, we need to remember that the worst-case alternative to international cooperation and multilateralism is the pursuit of national interests to the brink of armed conflict.”  My take on history is that it was nationalism that created the so-called “Great War” (that war to end all wars) and it was nationalism that created World War II.  Nationalist governments have recently taken power in Hungary and Poland, and populist parties are on the rise across the European continent.  Britain is exiting the European Union and the United States of America’s present administration rejects globalism and the American president declares himself a nationalist.  

The best way to honor Armistice Day 11/11/11, 1918 and the best way to honor Veterans Day 11/11/11, 2018 is to know “history” and to stand up against letting “history repeat itself.”