The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
We like to talk today about everything but the end of the First World War.
But I'm going to, for just a few minutes.
We love our holidays here in the United States. We also at least mouth the words that we appreciate those who sacrificed their time, money and even their lives for this nation.
We throw parties, parades, football games (gridiron) and solicit donations in exchange for American flags of dubious manufacture or paper poppies. Most of you don't even know why the poppies.
Not to worry, I'm going to tell you. But first, a bit about War.
Warfare is one of mankind's oldest activities. For most of known history, it was men only (not really, but we'll pay lip service to the official history for now.) War began with rocks, sticks and fists, feet, elbows knees and head-butts. In the earliest times, War was bad, but relatively manageable. Sometimes people got killed, but mostly they yelled at each other and beat on each other until one side or the other ran away. Along with this developed the concepts of Honor, Bravery and Heroism. Most probably the first one to run away in a battle would be dishonored, the last to run honored and those who bothered to show up bravery, and those who made the other side run away first heroes. But the problem is, while medical technology developed, so did killing technology. We went from fists, rocks and sticks to arrows, spears and rock-clubs or hatchets. But the first world war was uniquely ugly because it was the first major Industrial Age war, and we brought industrial age weapons to it. But the world wasn't ready for Industrial age warfare yet. We were still fighting as if it were the Boer war -- with rifles, trenches, non-recuperating artillery and swords and bayonets. Except it was not the Boer war. We had recuperating artillery (cannon that don't need to be re-laid between salvos), machine-guns and worst of all, gas. We didn't know how to cope with those. We didn't know how to cope with sappers who used TNT by the ton, either. In short, the war was a horror raised to an exponential fever pitch. Indeed, so grim was it that the United States feared a global societal collapse and a global pandemic. We got the second of those two, a pandemic of influenza, which killed more than double those killed in the war.
In WW1, men died by the millions. Historians would later reckon that an entire generation of the English upper class was wiped out by the war. The casualties were horrific. It was also the first time the psychological effects of warfare were recognized. Men came home devastated. Physically and emotionally wrecked. It would take years for them to recover, and some never did. We did not learn from that grim lesson. Men who came home were often treated poorly. Few benefits were granted them. Once the war was over, it was over. Bonuses that were promised to be paid "in the future" often didn't happen. The poppy became the symbol of the peace, because of a poem by Col. John McCrae, titled "In Flanders Fields."
I include a copy from Wikipedia:
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.
So, remember these people who fought and died in the first world war. The first war of the Industrial age. The horror war. Remember it and don't be fooled when some thieving politician tells you we need to go fight another war. The United States should not ever fight a war of choice. So remember those men, but also remember the horrors they perpetrated on each other, In Flanders Fields.
