On Veterans Day
[NOTE: This is a slightly-edited repost of an article originally written in 2005.]
Yes, indeed, I am that old—old enough to very vaguely remember when Veterans Day was called Armistice Day, or at least to imagine that I do. The change in names occurred in 1954, when I was very small, in order to accommodate World War II and its veterans.
Since then, the original name has largely fallen out of use—although it remains, like a vestigial organ, in the timing of the holiday: November 11th, which commemorates the day the WWI armistice was signed (eleventh hour, eleventh day, eleventh month).
I’m also old enough–and had a teacher ancient enough—to have been forced to memorize that old chestnut “In Flanders Fields” in fifth grade—although without being given any historical context for it. I think at the time I assumed it was about World War II, since as far as I knew that was the only real war.
You can find the story of the poem here . It was written by a Canadian doctor who served in the European theater (there is no separate URL for the discussion of the poem, but you should click on the “John McCrae´s Poppies in Flander’s Fields” link on the left sidebar). It’s not great poetry, but it was great propaganda to encourage America’s entry into what was known at the time as the Great War.
The poem’s first line “In Flanders fields the poppies blow” introduces the famous flower that later became the symbol of Armistice—and later, Veterans—Day. Why the poppy?
Wild poppies flower when other plants in their direct neighbourhood are dead. Their seeds can lie on the ground for years and years, but only when there are no more competing flowers or shrubs in the vicinity (for instance when someone firmly roots up the ground), these seeds will sprout.
There was enough rooted up soil on the battlefield of the Western Front; in fact the whole front consisted of churned up soil. So in May 1915, when McCrae wrote his poem, around him bloodred poppies blossomed like no one had ever seen before.
But in this poem the poppy plays one more role. The poppy is known as a symbol of sleep. The last line We shall not sleep, though poppies grow / In Flanders fields might point to this fact. Some kinds of poppies are used to derive opium from, from which morphine is made. Morphine is one of the strongest painkillers and was often used to put a wounded soldier to sleep. Sometimes medical doctors used it in a higher dose to put the incurable wounded out of their misery.
Now a day to honor those who have served in our wars, Veterans Day has an interesting history in its original Armistice Day incarnation. It was actually established as a day dedicated to world peace, back in the early post-WWI year of 1926, when it was still possible to believe that WWI had been the war fought to end all wars.
The original proclamation establishing Armistice Day as a holiday read as follows:
Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and
Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and
Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared November 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.
After the carnage of World War II, of course, the earlier hope that peaceful relations among nations would not be severed had long been extinguished. By the time I was a young child, a weary nation sought to honor those who had fought in all of its wars in order to secure the peace that followed—even if each peace was only a temporary one.
And isn’t an armistice a strange (although understandable) sort of hybrid, after all; a decision to lay down arms without anything really having been resolved? Think about the recent wars that have ended through armistice: WWI, which segued almost inexorably into WWII; the 1948 war following the partition of Palestine; the Korean War; and the Gulf War. All of these conflicts exploded again into violence—or have continually threatened to ever since.
So this Veterans/Armistice Day, let’s join in saluting and honoring those who have fought for our country. The hope that some day war will not be necessary is a laudable one—and those who fight wars hold it, too. But that day has not yet arrived—and, realistically but sadly, perhaps it never will.
And isn’t an armistice a strange (although understandable) sort of hybrid, after all; a decision to lay down arms without anything really having been resolved? Think about the recent wars that have ended through armistice: WWI, which segued almost inexorably into WWII; the 1948 war following the partition of Palestine; the Korean War; and the Gulf War. All of these conflicts exploded again into violence–or have continually threatened to ever since.
An armistice precludes one side having unambiguously and irrevocably defeated the other, but rather entails both sides, weary of fighting, agreeing to let the other save face while leaving the original issue(s) unresolved.
Liberals love to say that violence never solves anything, but they’re wrong, unless they’re referring to violence not seen through to resolution.
In Flanders Fields by Major Dr. John McCrae, read by Linus @ 2:20
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VtGbJHXTQ8
A musical version that is good
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WCd3lQY0o8&feature=related
The poppies were a long time symbol of hope, even before Flanders.
those who study war, know of the poppies…
Jethro Tull
Let me bring you love from the field:
Poppies red and roses filled with summer rain
To heal the wound and still the pain
That threatens again and again
a folk song from the 1700s
Wait For The Wagon
And if your either from england during the blitz, or your a fan of pink floyd the wall album…
then the name Vera Lynn would mean something..
Dorothy Squires also put it out..
i could not find one with vera
Dorothy Squires – When The Poppies Bloom Again
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozs9i6fUGyc
now why did i bring her up?
Dame Vera Lynn launches Poppy Appeal (2009)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2V0jM166Go
We will meet again
don’t know where
don’t know when
But i know we will meet again some sunny day….
We’ll Meet Again – Vera Lynn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHcunREYzNY
Dame Vera Lynn: ‘We must support our boys and girls’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXhhWEl8MPY&feature=channel
she says she finds it odd that after 70 years she still is behind this same kind of appeal.
The last surviving WWI veteran lives pretty close to my hometown. Here is a report on his efforts to obatain a national memorial for his fellow veterans:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/nov/10/last-us-wwi-vet-seeks-dc-memorial-fellow-vets/
When I was in HS, I volunteered with the Junior Red Cross at the nearby VA hospital and had the privilege of delivering water and helping feed WWI nurses. One in particular told about some of her experiences and made me realize how young they were. The experience changed the way I viewed history.
Some folks in fairly high places are offering wishes for “Happy Veterans’ Day”.
Offensive in its stupidity.
But Hey, it’s no worse than “Happy Halloween”.
When the Germans asked the exhausted Allies if they wanted to quit, the Allies agreed quickly.
At the time, the Germans were everywhere on Allied territory, had taken fat land from Russia in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk and, said a couple of historians of WW II, had a good case for having won WW I. But sanctions (blockade) forced them to come to actual peace terms in 1919.
Then came WW II and the idea that letting the bastards up easy was a really, really bad idea.
There is a bit more to the name change of the holiday and other consolidations later. The idea was to reverse the relationship of holidays from something that the clerks in state and business had to put up with that the people wanted, to something that the state granted the people.
The biggest changes to the holidays we had as our own to the ones granted came in 1971. The move to put them on Mondays to give ‘workers’ three day holidays (and of course no mention as to the other beneficiaries of such a change). At this time, other holidays were consolidated.
What it did, as I said above, was change the source of the holiday, and it required the elite in state to decide whether or not to celebrate. the same is also true of naming libraries and such, which is why so many of them now celebrate communists and other interesting historical figures quite antithetical.
the shifting of the day diluted meaning and reverence. the actual day was no longer important, cargo cult symbolism in pretend deference is good enough. and once the actual day was no longer important we just decided to stack them up.
this Monday game also had an effect on religious centers. if you increased the number of holidays falling on Monday, you increase the likely hood that the family would be split between taking advantage and travel, or observance.
Veterans day was moved to Mondays as well in 71, and it took an act of congress to move it back to its actual day in 78.
so there IS some importance to whether you are on the actual day or not. (what does that imply about Lincoln, Washington birthday).
in a couple of weeks we will be celebrating another holiday which is not on the actual day any more either. Thanksgiving. A holiday started by Lincoln. however it wasn’t made ‘official’ until 1941… and while they were at it they moved it back from the last Thursday to the fourth Thursday in hopes that a longer Christmas season would boost the economy.
i will also point out that there is ANOTHER reason to make a Veterans day, rather than actually remembering the days.
you lose the meaning and the history
you bury the history that would kind of make people notice what was going on around them
Armistice day would make people remember the first war distinct from all others, just as VDay, etc would.
It totally de-emphasized the days that came after the war, de-emphasized Hoover feeding the world (and the birth of that “clean your plate dont you know there are starving children in…”)
There were certain qualities of life of that era that set the Stage for so much more, and we forgot it.
Who kept the Belgians’ black bread buttered?
Who fed the world when millions muttered?
Who knows the needs of every nation?
Who keeps the keys of conservation?
Who fills the bins when mines aren’t earning?
Who keeps the home fires banked and burning?
Who’ll never win a presidential position?
For he isn’t a practical politician?
Hoover–that’s all!
Just before the Armistice, Secretary of state Lansing was quoted as saying
“Empty stomachs mean Bolsheviks”.
“Full stomachs mean no Bolsheviks”.
Headlines over the past two weeks:
Tighter U.S. corn supplies may mean higher food prices
Hungary Inflation Rate Rises More Than Economists Forecast on Food Prices
Rising food prices drive China inflation to two-year high
National Inflation Association Projects Future U.S. Food Price Increases
Hoover used food to keep crisis down so that Bolshevism would not spread. He at one time owned a Dascha and a copper mine which he made profitable and had working.
just after the revolution, the socialists came in, removed the knowledgeable people who could maintain the equipment and could do the work, and the whole thing was defunct in short order.
To actually remember Armistice day was to remember it not just as the end of the war, but the beginning of the setting the stage for future conflict, and a whole lot of history around some of the most generous acts in human history (and some of the most atrocious)
Its this related history that Occam was referring to the other day when he mentioned Spartacist LEAGUE by mentioning Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, to the commentary on the news calling for various forms of seizing power.
[if you know the organizations, and there histories, you would not think that LEAGUE was a word that was just chosen for no reason. just as PEOPLES was a flag for everyone in the know to recommend Zinns work (and fake a trend by collective action – heck Will Hunting told Sean Maguire the professor to read his book it would “knock your socks off”)]
Bolsheviks had control of Munich and Hamburg. They were taking advantage of the hard terms put on Germany and the starvation, and lack of food. it was in these moments that the public was being drowned in class struggle rhetoric… the idea of disparate impact to cause hatred to move good people would come later.
Ebert Government adopted the motto “without order, no bread”, and for a while Germany was saved from a Bolshevik uprising and a socialist state. and all this was before 1920 and during the year 1919.
Hoover sent trainloads of food to Hungary.
[to be continued in next post…]
Thank you, to you veterans who have spent life and health in our protection.
Applebees provides a free meal to veterans so my boss and I, we went last year. I’m a veteran, not of any active combat, but I did two regular and six in the National Guard. Damn near volunteered for Desert Storm but I had other plans and the sign-up bonus almost but didn’t deter me. I went straight from the 101st Airborne to a college campus. Can’t say as how I enjoyed the new company. Except for one history professor who was a WWII vet.
When I’m around troops, I feel at ease and since its been awhile, and since last year at Applebees was stirring, I thought, “make it a tradition.” I remembered seeing men in wheelchairs, groups of veterans, and old, very old men: all eating and drinking and enjoying a free meal. Something sad and deep about that.
This year I didn’t get in. Too crowded. The foyer was full and the line stretched out the door. I would have waited. The spirit was good. Without preamble I could approach anyone and strike up an amiable conversation. Where did you serve? What unit were you with? What was your MOS?
The amount of veterans applying was double, triple than last year. For a meal? What’s going on?
So different from welfare lines. Friends all around. No crying and complaining and demanding. No obscenity. Even though there might be a g-damn or a “shit those shit birds were up a shit creek,” it’s just salt and pepper and don’t amount to obscenity.
But I didn’t belong because I didn’t need this meal. It looked like most who were there did, at least in the sense that this was more than their usual fare. They weren’t asking for charity; but honest help–that would be okay. It is altogether proper to remember, every year, so we don’t forget. They did the most and ask for the least.
Enlisted 22 years in the Air Force (most of it as an SP) and for the most part it sucked: low pay, mostly bad housing, lousy promotion rates and crappy supervisors. Long hours, long always deployed, 2 1/2 years in a HFZ.
I stuck it out though, married, two small kids – didn’t have the fat GI Bill of those that enlisted before or after me – otherwise I’d have never stayed in.
I always resolved to be the best. I went to night school – finally got a MSCIS, mentored my troops – got five promoted btz, one a commission. Now helping my two kids with their Bachelor’s degrees (both in biology).
God, I’m tired. Good night all, Happy Veterans Day.
The night is too busy… sorry…
but to finish the last part in a hurry, it leads to…
March 22, 1919… When the Soviets captured Bela Kuhn a soldier, and converted him… remember that name? i said to read about it as it pertains to us… it was bela kuhn that set up a new soviet government, and launched right into various forms of manipulation and red terror. He was overthrown, but thats not the last of him… Kun became a leading figure in the Comintern, as an ally of Grigory Zinoviev. it was kuhn that attempted Mé¤rzaktion in germany. all this later caused hungary to side with the nazis, then was taken over… later Mé¡tyé¡s Ré¡kosi took over hungary, and was a colleague of kuhn
while that is much later its still interesting..
as it was Rakosi who invented SALAMI TACTICS…
its important as its where Alinsky and others got some of their ideas and tactics… which is why i said to read it..
when they go after palin in masse, and so on, they are using the salami tactic.
to quote wiki again:
This strategy was also used in the majority of Eastern European countries in the second half of the 1940s.
which is why those people and their children recognize whats going on..
so now you know that the tactics and things are the same… but unless you went through this stuff, you wont read it, figure it out, and see it. and my saying it is always opposed.
you can lead a horse to water but you cant make him drink
Hoovers threat to end food shipments in 1919 in Vienna stopped a “May Day” Bolshevik revolution there.
Hoover tried to help Mannerheim of finland attack and take petrograd… but he lost an election and the left government put a halt to it.
Hoover then focused on the baltics, latvia, estonia, and lithuania… the germans occupied them, and after the Armistice the states might be up for grabs… nationalists and bolshivists fought for control.
hoover put it “the soviets were spreading communism by infection”
lithuania became soviet, and that fell, and hoover brought food in and prevented bolshivism (for a while)
latvia immediately called itself free, and Karlis Ulmanis a nationalist leader (who spent the last 8 years teaching in nebraska), took up the challenge
the red army invaded… and the we asked the germans to occupy to protect the latvians
in the meantime, the soviets opened up the prisons, let out the criminals and gave some of the worst of them jobs with the police, and so forth (the brutal class).
Hoover asked a german general to go into riga, as the soviets were having a field day massacaring people. bodies in the streets, rotting corpses, summary executions. wilson dragged his feet on the whole thing, and it was hoover that overstepped to stop the sadistic misery
remember this is all the same year 1919!!!!
from january to may 1919 it lasted… estimates of 1000 a day were executed… teachers, clergymen, etc were singled out and machine gunned..
even worse, when the german Goltz occupied the city, he started his own white terror.. hoover protested..
the finns, brits and others helped estonia, and it kept fighting… in february 1919, it was free (for a while)
england and france wanted to start a war again to go after the Bolsheviks
around this time was the Archangel incident and the failure to halt the soviets..
things settled down by 1920… russia was in famine.. and the peasants now learned that the rhetoric meant no taxes, no rents, no debts to the state (czars), but they were very quickly finding out it meant that everything they owned now belonged to the state, as the soviets took entire harvests, including personal usage, and seed for next plantings. (sold it to the US)
the reason to change armstice day is that we wouldnt learn WHY our grandparents hated the socialists!!!!!!!!!!!
and those actions after the war, the attrocities, and on and on continued… on up to hilter and his pact with the soviets stalin… and then after hitler gone, the taking of the sattelites, the gulags… then china.. then korea… it just went on and on and never ever stopped… never a decade of peace..
and the young have mostly no idea of the history i just told… for them hoover was the cross dressing hypocrite who went after innocent reds in state, and other places..
Dodger, did you see that vicious piece of propaganda the Leftoids in Hollywood put out, slandering and defiling the memory of Wild Bill Donovan, OSS founder?
There’s an excellent book about Donovan, “The Last Hero,” I think it is. It mentions that when FDR heard Pearl Harbor had been bombed, Donovan was the first man he thought to call.
I find your posts fascinating. And disturbing…. I’ve observed some of the mind-manipulation tactics you refer to; as a writer, I tend to notice such things. Most people don’t: but the Left scored a huge propaganda victory when they got rid of Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays. Can’t have any dead WASP males as national heroes, can we?
Here’s that movie: The Good Shepherd. Vile filth about our men, and upwards of a thousand lies.
“De Niro had not directed another film until 2006’s The Good Shepherd, which starred Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. The Good Shepherd depicts the origins of the CIA [er, NO], with Damon portraying one of the top counter-intelligence agents during World War II and the Cold War. De Niro has a small role as General Bill Donovan, who recruits Damon’s character into the world of counter-intelligence.”
What is it with that jackass Damon? does he think it’s cute to shi* where you eat? And De Niro played Donovan as a brute. Filthy liars. I was actually twisting in my seat as I watched all the lies on the screen. Sickening.
From The Strategy Page, which has movie reviews from an American, not Leftist, perspective:
“Anti-CIA movies tend to follow a fairly predictable pattern. The film makers usually take pains to avoid showing any of America’s real world enemies, because to do so might imply that the CIA, by spying on those enemies, serves a legitimate and important function. So the trick, for most of these movies, is to avoid showing any sort of outside enemy, and have the adversary be someone inside the Agency, or inside the American government. A rogue CIA agent, or faction, makes a much better, and safer, villain for this purpose than a foreign spy ring or terrorist group.
The Good Shepherd, an ambitious (and very long) anti-CIA movie directed by Robert DeNiro, takes a different, and more subtle tack. The movie purports to tell the story of the founding of the Agency , as seen through the eyes of a fictional operative named Edward Wilson (Matt Damon). Since the CIA was formed for the purpose of combating a real adversary in the very real Cold War, DeNiro can’t completely avoid showing the enemy. (Although he gives it a good try.) Instead, he focuses on showing the corrupting effects of secrecy on his main character, over a period of twenty years.
Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) is recruited by the FBI while still a student a Yale in 1939 to spy on a pro-Nazi professor. He is also inducted into the Skull and Bones society, where he meets other young men from wealthy and prominent families, many of whom will later become his CIA colleagues…. When the war in Europe breaks out, Wilson is approached by a Gen. Bill Donovan (Robert DeNiro) who is forming a foreign intelligence service, and needs the “right sort” of men. “No Jews or Negroes”, DeNiro explains, “And as few Catholics as possible. And that’s only because I’m Catholic.” [NEVER HAPPENED: they just “made” Donovan a racist.]
… The names have all been changed, not to protect the innocent, but because the facts have been changed as well.
… The Good Shepherd dramatizes a number of real life events, but repeatedly changes or omits facts in order to show America and the CIA in the worst possible light. One instance involves the harsh interrogation and torture of a Soviet defector obviously based on Yuri Nosenko. DeNiro’s version of the tale omits the fact that Nosenko was treated badly because he was caught repeatedly lying to his CIA handlers, raising suspicions that he was a Soviet plant. (Which may not excuse, but at least explains.) After the Bay of Pigs invasion, DeNiro has the CIA director (William Hurt) stepping down because of hidden Swiss bank accounts. In fact, President Kennedy fired Director Allen Dulles over the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion , not for financial sleaze. Wilson is assured by a defector that Soviet power is an illusion, that the Soviet Union is a “bloated, rotted cow.” The Cold War, according to DeNiro, was a sham foisted on an unwitting public.
Perhaps the most outrageous distortion in the movie is a brief subplot that has Wilson helping British intelligence threaten and eventually kill a loyal, highly capable senior officer simply because he is homosexual, and the British fear he may be compromised. This never happened. Showing American intelligence officers involved in the persecution and murder of homosexuals is politically correct. Showing British intelligence being betrayed by homosexual traitors such as Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt would not have been.
Spotting the smears and distortions in The Good Shepherd could make a fairly entertaining drinking game. … DeNiro depicts many of the Agency’s founders as a bunch of overprivileged, overconfident frat boys out of their depth.
The Good Shepherd plays like a cross between the Godfather movies and an Oliver Stone conspiracy flick. At nearly two hours and fifty minutes, it’s hard to sit through. It’s never boring, just very long and often mendacious. …Anyone wanting the truth about the men who founded the CIA, and the Agency’s early years, will not get it from this movie.
http://www.strategypage.com/moviereviews/default.asp?target=The%20Good%20Shepherd
Artfldgr:
I’ve heard that before, so I decided to check it out. Using the “cal” function (open a terminal window and type “cal 1941”–without the quotes), I determined that the only years of Roosevelt’s presidency that had five Thursdays were 1933, 1934, 1939, and 1944. All other years had four Thursdays.
So I went to Wikipedia and found this:
So he tried to do it in 1939 when it might have done some good, but after that, there wasn’t really any point to it. A lot of his policies seem to have been based on whims, like the way he earlier fixed the price of gold by just making up whatever number sounded good at the moment.
Oops. Should read:
…the only years of Roosevelt’s presidency that had five Thursdays in November were 1933, 1934, 1939, and 1944.
Excellent point Rickl!!!
I never connected and registered that 🙂
thanks!!!
I will once again call attention to an excellent, though fairly long, piece from American Heritage (History) Magazine by John Steele Gordon:
What We Lost In The Great War
I assert that, reading this article, one will become aware of how it is that once-sensible Classical Liberalism got perverted into the cancerous, suicidal meme we call PostModern Liberalism.
It should be read, and re-read, by all.
> Liberals love to say that violence never solves anything, but they’re wrong, unless they’re referring to violence not seen through to resolution.
I always like Robert A Heinlein’s riposte to this imbecility:
To paraphrase it: “Really? Why don’t you go ask the city fathers of Carthage what they think of that idea. What? No more Carthage? I guess violence pretty well settled that dispute, didn’t it?”
> But sanctions (blockade) forced them to come to actual peace terms in 1919.
Then came WW II and the idea that letting the bastards up easy was a really, really bad idea.
Ah, you do realize it was the ruinous terms of that peace treaty that led directly to the collapse of the Wiemar Republic, and thence, without doubt, to the chaos that led to National Socialism coming to power?
Germany was NOT dealing from a position of strength. They gave up claims to vast tracts of land (which were among the first things Hitler took back, and which the allies, attempting to placate, didn’t dispute). agreed to basically re-pay the allies for ALL their war expenses, and essentially agreed to dissolve their army and navy into a minimal force barely able to keep out an overly aggressive Norway.
It was parts of this which led to Germany’s experimentation with other war mechanisms not covered/outlawed by the treaty, which wound up so successful as a part of blitzkrieg technique.
In summary:
“ANNNNK!!! ‘Thanks for playing. You lose. Insert Coin.”
Beverly, I personally recall it as exceptionally boring, quite pointless, and an example of how to not make a movie — by making certain that
a) there are no engaging, interesting characters one cares about in the least
b) no one ever makes any kind of positive transformation — learns something about themself, about life, about those around them, that will hold them in good stead later in life (unrelated side note: One reason I HATE the popular movie “Seven”).
I believe that DeNiro, and, like him, Jack Nicholson, have become talented hacks who phone in their performances at best. In particular I call attention to DeNiro’s crappy mugging through “Analyze This”, wherein I would swear I could read his mind: “They’re actually gonna pay me for this crap! Whatta bunch of maroons!”
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