Remembrance on Veterans Day

In America it is Veterans Day, in England it is Remembrance Day, but the day honors the same purpose - it honors the Veterans that fought for our ways of life.

In America it is celebrated on the Friday or Monday closest to November 11th. And so, today and tomorrow we are in thanks of our Veterans. We do not owe them awe or acquiescence, we don't owe them a cup of coffee or reflexive gestures. I owe them a sincere thank you for the gift of their lives, be it a year or two or a lifetime, that they gave so that my way of life and our country's values can thrive. And I give that Thank You honestly and gladly.

We honor them now because on the 11th Day of the 11th Month was the armistice of World War I.

At the time it was called The Great War. Not because it was glorious or great in any positive manner, in fact the opposite. It was a hellish war with millions of deaths that consumed all of Europe. It remade the map of Europe, it end signified the end of Empires, the beginning of killing on an industrial scale (the first major war with machine guns, airplanes, submarines, chemical weapons and more). But it was so awful, so terrible that people at the time though War, as a means to end, would be no more. Life was too sacred.  We can only weep that that sentiment didn't last twenty years.

 As for the red poppies...

My friend Jane explained the significance of the red poppies to me. Red poppies will germinate only when the ground is disrupted. The fighting in Flanders, Belgium was so intense that the ground was all turned. Then the dead were buried there. Hence, the red poppies the next year. Red poppies bloomed from the graves of the dead.

The poem below is from the dead to the living. It was written before the poet (and everyone else) was cynical about the war. When that war could still be thought of as a strong and just war.

IN FLANDERS FIELDS POEM The World’s Most Famous WAR MEMORIAL POEM By Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place: and in the sky The larks still bravely singing fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the dead: Short days ago, We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved: and now we lie In Flanders fields!  Take up our quarrel with the foe To you, from failing hands, we throw The torch: be yours to hold it high If ye break faith with us who die, We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields Composed at the battlefront on May 3, 1915 during the second battle of Ypres, Belgium