Armistice

[pecunium]

Today is a day of remembrance. What we remember isn't what used to be commemorated (at least not in the states). It didn't used to be about veterans. It was about war, and the ending of one, 90 years ago today.

It was a time to ponder peace and the costs of the war which preceded it.

It was a time to contemplate, and try to forget the horrors of stalemate.

It was a time of wonder. For those in the trenches, life was handed back to them, for a time. It wasn't a peace, it was an armistice and only guaranteed for 36 days.

In the United Kingdom, and Commonwealth it is Remembrance Day, and still the world falls silent at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, in a remembered presagement of the sentiment from a later war, "Never Forget".

There are few alive, who actually remember, fewer still; who stood in the line. We must be their memory, we must carry the torch, keep the memory alive of just what the world hoped it had gained with this declaration:

On the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year 1918, the guns fell silent on the Western Front.

Comments

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

In the UK and Commonwealth, the Royal British Legion, Canadian Legion, &c. hold poppy sales to raise funds and it is normal to see people wearing paper poppies in their lapels. It is a bit strange not to see that custom here in the United States.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I have a poppy coming in the mail, but it didn't arrive. I suspect it shall get here tomorrow; delayed by the holiday.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

What can one say, but 'drat!'

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I will be more amused, shoult the observance of the holiday make it impossible for me to have so observed it.

A sort of recursive thing, to be sure.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Indeed so!

[ailsaek.livejournal.com]

My paternal grandfather was a sergeant in the trenches in WWI. I have a photo of him with his unit and a box with his medals in it. My grandmother served as a nurse in England. All of my father's family is gone now, so my mother has the letters my grandfather wrote to my grandmother from the front.

My father was born well before the armistice. I can only imagine what the final hours of the war were like for them all.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

My, more specific, thoughts on the day are here, where I speak of my grandfather, who fouhgt in WW1.

[ailsaek.livejournal.com]

Wow. To both posts.

[tfcocs.livejournal.com]

Growing up in San Diego, I remember, up until the early 1980's, hearing it referred to as Armistice Day as often as Veteran's Day.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Such holidays do seem to change in their orientation. Memorial Day, I understand, was originally intended to commemorate the Veterans of the U.S. Civil War -- and was still often called "Decoration Day" in my youth, by which time it had transmorphed into visiting the cemetery and remembering all the family dead, though the graves of the Civil (and sometimes other) War dead were usually decorated with a small flag.

Changing Armistice Day into Veterans Day, and into something with overtones of celebrating Military Might, has not, in my opinion, been a wise or admirable choice.