11-11-11

Armistice Day later called Veterans' Day

In the USA we started to commemorate this day as Armistice Day in 1918 when the guns fell silent to end the Great War, which we now call either the First World War or else World War One. The reason was that the guns were scheduled to stop all across the fronts at 11:11 that day, the 11th day of the eleventh month.

Now today we even have an eleventh year to add to the numerology of it.

Meanwhile the ten million dead of that war, which they rightly thought was bad, have been outnumbered by the dead of many more wars since then. That one was hyped over here as the War to End All Wars, but it hardly worked out that way after all.

Here in the USA, the name of the day eventually was changed to Veterans' Day, but the date will always hearken us back to the Armistice of World War I.

World War One Scenes Today, in Pics

So I have here a set of about twenty-two pictures, on another site, that show the landscapes in France and Belgium, Gallipoli on the European Turkish coast, and places like that from significant events of World War I and showing them as they look now.

You can still see the earth churned badly at places like Verdun. A whole village disappeared. A wall of a chapel where the British Guards fought in 1914. Take a look, it only takes a few minutes and it's well worth remembering these things. Just scroll down a couple inches from the ad on there.

We have so many war dead that we were compelled to have two days in the year for them, so at the end of May we also have Memorial Day, more specifically aimed to commemorate the dead, whereas this day also encompasses honoring the veterans still living, so I have seen several restaurants, a furniture store and the like, offering free meals or just deals for veterans alive but hungry.  In some cases it can be really crass commercialism, but not always entirely.

WARNING
Ordinary People Stop Reading Here, the Hard-Core Read a Little More

The November 9 Washington Post had an article about mistreatment of the bodies of the returning veterans from 2003 to 2008, but unfortunately I cannot link to the article itself because they are already returning an error message, that it has been hidden away in the past two days apparently. They have hauled parts to landfills, this is specifically at Dover AFB in Delaware, and came out as the result of aa federal investigation. Sorry the link I intended comes up short only two days after the story appeared.

Because of that, the best I can do is show you a blog talking about it, with quotes from the article, but the article itself at the Washington Post is not coming up. You can try it yourself and search for further information if interested. Disgusting though it is, it is better to know than to cover up and pretend it isn't there.

No, go ahead and try that, this link above did work for me, the story is by Whitlock and Jaffe. The one that says 'article itself at the Washington Post.

Then here's the blog, he was talking about the Marine Corps Birthday Nov 9 and reacting to the story referenced.

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