Armistice Day

Today is the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I, which ended on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918.  The Great War, the war to end war, is better understood by another name by which it was called at the time - The Meat Grinder.  Although the gruesome effects of modern weaponry had been seen as early as the American Civil War, the Great War brought insane body counts and casualties to a peak never before seen in human history and, God willing, unlikely to be seen ever again.  The Battle of the Somme in 1916 resulted in 1.5 million casualties over four months.

Veteran's Day, which is today, commemorates the end of that war.  For many years after the war, in many of the countries that had sacrificed entire generations to the Meat Grinder, everything stopped at 11 AM on November 11th each year as a memorial.

In the U.S., Veteran's Day has been largely supplanted by Memorial Day as the primary military holiday, but it is still a Federal holiday and older Americans will remember the symbolism of the 11th hour.

My father's step-father lied about his age in 1917 and joined the U.S. Expeditionary Force to fight in France in the last year of the war.  When I began to study history, I tried to ask him about his time in battle, but he would only give me one answer, "That was a long time ago kid."  He was gassed at one point and described to my father the sight of the low cloud of mustard poison creeping across the field in the late evening light.  Ninety years later, one of the companies I work with in my professional life is working on a potential treatment for mustard gas exposure in a terror attack. Amazing to think about.

At any rate, take a few seconds today to listen to this recording  (link to the clip is at the end of the article )of a battle in the last days of the war.  Chilling stuff.