Remembering Veterans Day
Thanks to America’s heroes
In honor of Veterans Day, I’m offering a piece that I wrote back in 2022. I finished both the book and the podcast series as well as another Meyer book, “The World Remade,” that focuses on America’s role in World War I. Coincidentally, this year’s Veterans Day falls on November 11, the same day as the original Armistice Day.
I’d like to also take a moment to express my thanks and admiration to all of our veterans including my dad and cousin, who served in the US Army, my uncle who was in the US Navy, and my son and another cousin who are both currently serving in the US Air Force. I could insert a joke about my family being too smart to join the Marines, but I do have some jarhead friends and I like those guys too.
Today is Veterans Day for those of us in the United States. We honor the veterans of past military service. Technically speaking, current service members are honored on Armed Forces Day, the third Saturday in May. Still, in my opinion, it isn’t inappropriate to give a friendly shout-out to current service members today (like my son, who is servicing in the US Air Force).
Many people don’t know that Veterans Day has its origins in Armistice Day, which celebrated the end of World War I. Of course, back then, they didn’t call it “World War I.” Until the world war got a sequel three decades later, WWI was typically known as the “Great War” or the “War to End All Wars.” That second name obviously didn’t take and has since been retired.
I’ve been interested in WWI for a long time, but these days it is overshadowed by WWII. Now over for more than 100 years, WWI seems like ancient history, but in reality, it shapes the world that we live in even today.
Back in school, by the time we go to the 20th century, we were usually running out of time at the end of the term so a lot of recent history got short shrift. My high school World History class (taught by a coach, but one who did a good job of teaching) told me that the war started because of a network of alliances that came into play after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and that Germany and the Central Powers lost, but we didn’t go a lot deeper than that.
From reading on my own, I learned a lot about the early days of military aviation and the origin story of the tank. Almost everybody knows about the trenches, U-boats, and the Lusitania too. But even though I’m a history nut, there were a lot of gaps in my knowledge of WWI.
This year, I finally decided to correct that deficiency. After listening to a podcast series, the “Key Battles of World War I,” I sought out what seemed to be the best one-volume history of the Great War. This consensus seems to be that this is “A World Undone” by G. J. Meyer.
I haven’t finished the book, but I can already recommend it unreservedly. If you’d like to know more about WWI, this is an entertaining and gripping account that gives a good explanation of how the political situation developed as well as detailed and insightful accounts of the fighting. This is probably the definitive history of the Great War.
If you have ever had a curiosity about WWI, November 11 is a great day to take the plunge and start listening to the podcast series or reading the book. Movies about the Great War are few and far between (especially when compared with WWII or the Civil War), but there are some classics to check out. “All Quiet On The Western Front,” starring Richard “John Boy Walton” Thomas, and “1917” are both excellent. (As I write this, I notice that a new remake of “All Quiet” is being released this year.)
There seems to be a pattern that serious WWI movies are as much antiwar movies as they are war movies. Delving into the history of how the war needn’t have been fought (at least on the global or continental level) and how wasteful and tragic it was illuminates why this is so.
As Americans, WWI is almost a footnote to us. The US entered the war in 1917 and it ended in 1918. The US lost a total of 116,516 soldiers, but only 53,402 of those were combat deaths. We lost more (63,114) soldiers to the 1918 flu pandemic than to enemy action. To put that into perspective, the French lost 27,000 soldiers killed during a single day in the opening days of the war and more than 1.3 million in four years of fighting.
The slaughter was such that no one seemed to think it odd that, when the armistice was signed, the belligerents agreed to end the fighting at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month rather than calling an immediate ceasefire. The war went on for an extra three hours after the agreement.
Armistice Day became an annual observance for Americans in 1926 and then a national holiday in 1938. President Eisenhower changed the name to Veterans Day in 1954.
I’m a history nut, especially when it comes to military history, but as I get older, I realize more and more that all wars are wasteful, even the so-called “good wars.” War is sometimes necessary, but it is always tragic.
Not every veteran served in the trenches or was shot at or bombed. Even those who did not see combat put their lives on the line. Some volunteered. Many did not. All put their lives on hold to serve.
As you go about your weekend, thank a veteran for the sacrifices that they made to protect our liberty. We haven’t yet seen the war to end all wars.
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Remember that wars are always fought using the next war's technology and the last war's strategy. WWI was particularly devastating because it was fought with WWII technology using American Civil War strategy. Some of the WWI tech was so effective (gas against trenches) that it remains banned. Accurate rifles, machine guns, accurate big bore artillery, fought with Civil War mass troop command and control is a deadly mix.
Similarly, today, we're seeing drone and cyber tech used in wars fought with Gulf War fire and maneuver, combined arms combat tactics, and of course, the Russians still hew to WWII mass troop strategies. It results in the kind of devastation we saw in WWI. Cities ground to dust.
Know this: the next war, should there be a global conflict, will be more horrible than we can imagine. It will not be like the Gulf War where we watched it on TV. It will be fought in our homes, in our iPhones, in our minds, in our daily lives, and more effective than any bombers or strategic missiles could produce on America. If we lose, it's not because we can't fight, it's because we fought wrong.
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.
- John McCrae, 1915