When most of us look at Veterans Day on the calendar, we think no mail, banks closed, no school, getting closer to Thanksgiving, store sales, oh… and maybe a parade. But a few things this past week jogged more thoughts of family, history and heart-breaking sacrifice.
A woman sitting behind me at a church function this week noticed the Marine cap on the church pew next to my elderly father-in-law. She asked his age. When I replied, she remarked her father would have been the same age. She nodded to the cap and said "He was a Marine? So was my dad. Maybe they knew each other?" Being my father-in-law's memory is fading with his age, she said she would check in her father's bible for dad's name. That's where her father kept a record of many of the men he met during the war.
A coworker evoked memories with a question about Armistice Day. Today is also World Armistice Day, a term unfamiliar to many in younger generations. Armistice Day marks the end on World War I which took place with an armistice (treaty) on the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" 1918. As we commemorate Veterans Day today, we forget it began as Armistice Day, also known as Remembrance Day and is still a holiday under that name, as well as other names in countries affected by World War I. The thousands of poppies that grew in fields of Flanders after a bloody battle have become a symbol of the casualties of that war. The red flowers decorate World War I memorials around the world. I can remember paper poppies being distributed on Veterans Day when I was a child, but never knew the reason why. This is the first year there are no longer any living veterans of World War I in Britain.
A recollection on the radio this morning brought tears to my eyes as I drove to work. David Finkel, author of "The Good Soldiers", spent over a year with a battalion stationed in Iraq. Finkel remembered the only time he saw the commanding officer's composure break. The officer was on leave and visiting his injured soldiers. Finkel's detailed description of one 19-year-old's horrific injuries brought the unimaginable consequences of war to a very personal level.
As Veterans Day is commemorated, the key lies in the original title Remembrance Day. Our veterans are the gray-haired soldiers of past wars, marching in your local parade and sharing memories of a battle and men long ago. But our veterans are so much more, all ages and touching our lives today. Take the time to remember the lives of the fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, and all of their friends and fellow veterans who embody a spirit of sacrifice and comradery in wars past and present.
