Armistice Signed, End of War! [Veteran's Day]

Tox

On November 11, 1919, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson issued a message to his countrymen on the first Armistice Day, in which he expressed what he felt the day meant to Americans:

ADDRESS TO FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN

The White House, November 11, 1919.

A year ago today our enemies laid down their arms in accordance with an armistice which rendered them impotent to renew hostilities, and gave to the world an assured opportunity to reconstruct its shattered order and to work out in peace a new and juster set of international relations. The soldiers and people of the European Allies had fought and endured for more than four years to uphold the barrier of civilization against the aggressions of armed force. We ourselves had been in the conflict something more than a year and a half.

With splendid forgetfulness of mere personal concerns, we remodeled our industries, concentrated our financial resources, increased our agricultural output, and assembled a great army, so that at the last our power was a decisive factor in the victory. We were able to bring the vast resources, material and moral, of a great and free people to the assistance of our associates in Europe who had suffered and sacrificed without limit in the cause for which we fought.

Out of this victory there arose new possibilities of political freedom and economic concert. The war showed us the strength of great nations acting together for high purposes, and the victory of arms foretells the enduring conquests which can be made in peace when nations act justly and in furtherance of the common interests of men.

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 nations.

WOODROW WILSON

One hundred years later, we celebrate Veterans Day to commemorate the veterans, most of whom ranged from non-voluntary draftees to culturally presumed volunteers, of World Wars 1 and 2, as well as those who serve today, and everything in between. Celebrated around the world as Armistice Day / Remembrance Day, Veterans Day is largely focused on living veterans of major wars. Until recently, this was mostly folks who served in the World Wars, as well as Korea and Vietnam in the US. Eventually, as these veterans died, veterans of the more recent Cold War (which unofficially ended roughly 30 years ago, with the fall of The Berlin Wall) began to come into focus, and now after the US has spent an entire generation at war, it's quite common for the veterans of the various campaigns in the Near and Middle East (pardon the eurocentrist term) to be included in these celebrations as well.

Historically relevant, if you're interested at all in the history and events of World War 1 / The Great War, there's a youtube channel that has a week by week breakdown of events roughly one century later:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUcyEsEjhPEDf69RRVhRh4A

As a (...fourth? generation) veteran, being a veteran is rarely the Great Sacrifice™ that many try to make it out to be. Most of the veterans I know did it as much for a stable career as anything else. So to that end, I offer this small, humble piece of advice:

If you really want to thank a veteran or service member, just casually walk up to them, politely get their attention ("Excuse me" works, and you can always use rank if you know it), then look them in the eye, extend your hand for a handshake, and say "Thank you." Small, personal, and direct thanks are widely preferred.

Oh or steak. Steak works too.

Elaro

It's also the beginning of Carnaval Season in Germany!

UnbrokenEva

Dulce et Decorum Est
BY WILFRED OWEN

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Tox

"Fun" fact. There are still parts of France today (large parts!) that are uninhabitable because of shells and such

Zibblsnrt

Not just the munitions either - the stuff they're made of, too. There's big stretches of the Western Front which might not explode anymore, but if you scoop up some soil you'll find that the arsenic levels are thousands or even tens of thousands of times higher than the safe limits.

I think I've heard phrases like "ten percent of the soil by mass" in the worst parts, which I just cannot wrap my head around and which leaves me wondering just how as many people survived the war as did.

(Ed. - Ten percent arsenic by mass? Try 17.5%. Gaaaaah.)

Re: the Wilfred Owen poem, I spend the evening before Remembrance Day poking at war poets from the First World War up to the present day, since a lot of the ones that aren't in the standard 'canon' of war poetry deserve to be remembered and nearly all of them are telling some pretty personal views of a horrific time. One I keep coming back to:

To Germany, by Charles Hamilton Sorey (1895-1915)

You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,
And no man claimed the conquest of your land.
But gropers both through fields of thought confined
We stumble and we do not understand.
You only saw your future bigly planned,
And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,
And in each other's dearest ways we stand,
And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.

When it is peace, then we may view again
With new-won eyes each other's truer form
And wonder. Grown more loving-kind and warm
We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,
When it is peace. But until peace, the storm,
The darkness and the thunder and the rain.

Carpy

I legit still get uncomfortable when people tell me "thank you for your service". I haven't been on active duty for almost a decade so I'm never in uniform which means the only time it comes up is in the middle of a conversation with someone i probably don't really know and the "thank you" always feels like an aside, like something people do because that's what you're supposed to do when you find out someone served/is still serving. I know that's probably am uncharitable read of the situation but I don't think I've ever had an interaction like that that didn't leave me feeling awkward.

It's better than the yellow ribbon culture since a thank you is an actual personal gesture to a real person you're interacting with as opposed to a $10 purchase for the ribbon magnet, but I still don't know how to respond aside from an awkward thank you to their thank you.

Tox

Carpy wrote: »

I legit still get uncomfortable when people tell me "thank you for your service". I haven't been on active duty for almost a decade so I'm never in uniform which means the only time it comes up is in the middle of a conversation with someone i probably don't really know and the "thank you" always feels like an aside, like something people do because that's what you're supposed to do when you find out someone served/is still serving. I know that's probably am uncharitable read of the situation but I don't think I've ever had an interaction like that that didn't leave me feeling awkward.

It's better than the yellow ribbon culture since a thank you is an actual personal gesture to a real person you're interacting with as opposed to a $10 purchase for the ribbon magnet, but I still don't know how to respond aside from an awkward thank you to their thank you.

Oh it is always the most awkward situation for me as well, I'm about to just give up and start doing the whole *wink, finger guns* and just say fuck it.

godmode

Carpy wrote: »

I legit still get uncomfortable when people tell me "thank you for your service". I haven't been on active duty for almost a decade so I'm never in uniform which means the only time it comes up is in the middle of a conversation with someone i probably don't really know and the "thank you" always feels like an aside, like something people do because that's what you're supposed to do when you find out someone served/is still serving. I know that's probably am uncharitable read of the situation but I don't think I've ever had an interaction like that that didn't leave me feeling awkward.

It's better than the yellow ribbon culture since a thank you is an actual personal gesture to a real person you're interacting with as opposed to a $10 purchase for the ribbon magnet, but I still don't know how to respond aside from an awkward thank you to their thank you.

You rub your fingers together in front of them and add, "I think Mr. Franklin would like to express his thanks as well."

valhalla130

I very rarely have people thank me for my service. Probably because I look luke a shabby, middle-aged nerd more than a vet. And yez, it is very awkward.

But dang it, I showed that ID for that free Chik-fil-a meal!