Veteran’s day musings
Do you know the origins of Veteran’s Day?
I didn’t.
Veteran’s Day was originally ARMISTICE DAY. On November 11, 1918 at 11 a.m. the Germans accepted a truce, that ended The War To End All Wars. They were clearly defeated, but there was no gracious way out of the imperial empires run AMOK mess they had created.
Sound like anyone else in any other “white folks on steroids” impossible conflicts in our 2022 world?
Veteran’s Day moved into the area muttered about as “hero worship” in 1954. Americans had survived the trauma of two more big wars by then: World War 2 and the Korean War. “The (Korean War) armistice was signed on 27 July 1953, and was designed to “ensure a complete cessation of hostilities and of all acts of armed force in Korea until a final peaceful settlement is achieved…During the 1954 Geneva Conference in Switzerland, Chinese Premier and foreign minister Chou En-lai suggested that a peace treaty should be implemented on the Korean peninsula. However, the US secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, did not accommodate this attempt to achieve such a treaty. A final peace settlement has never been achieved. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Armistice_Agreement)”
So… reading between the lines, it sure looks to me like a bunch of dudes in D.C. were getting worried about soldiers coming back from a war we didn’t WIN maybe thinking too much about their relationship and their personal losses and that being a real negative thing for patriotism. So we transformed a holiday that was already embarrassing (WW1 NOT being “the war to end all wars”) into a way to make returning veterans of traumatic and confusing military service feel better.
And it appears that Veteran’s Day may have done just that. For a while. Then we had The Vietnam War, and too many military operations since 9/11 2001 to list, here.
Last year, I attended a Veteran’s Day event in W. Massachusetts. It was full of ceremony; the male (and two female) vets in attendance all wore their dress uniforms. We all sang the national anthem, and the Elk Club sponsors for the event gave their “11 O’Clock Toast” a tribute to departed members which was full of magic and mystery. But there were no vets in attendance that I recognized from any war since Vietnam. And the audience for the ceremony in front of the Memorial Wall— with all the names of local soldiers killed over the years— numbered less than ten. Counting me.
How this day has evolved/ devolved regarding what we think of, and how we act around and with the people in our country who give service—AND TOO OFTEN THEIR LIVES, THEIR PHYSICAL OR THEIR MENTAL HEALTH— in our bloated yet expanding Armed Services MATTERS.
There are many Issues We Vermonters Would Just As Soon Sweep Under The Rug: alcohol and drug addiction, domestic violence, suicide by gun violence are The Big Three. They all weave together in deep and challenging ways with our appreciation ( or, lack of it) of those who have been of military service to this country.
My last minute and somewhat spontaneous intentions to weave a children’s story circle into an “edu-taining” family friendly experience up at the Veteran’s Memorial Park in Hardwick, Vermont is still a plan in the works as I type this post/ will be a thing of the past as you read it/ listen to it.
But I am dreaming forward to next year’s Veteran’s Day. Because this area of collective grief and ongoing trauma is still a thing that we just don’t talk about enough.