I wrote today’s date in my date book and suddenly it clicked — 11/11, Veterans Day. I knew that it was Veteran’s Day, but somehow I didn’t know it. I had forgotten what it meant. So I opened a book and then I remembered — “acres of dead.” That kind of put things in perspective for me.
Specifically, November 11 is the anniversary of the signing of the Armistice ending World War I, enacted on the symbolically important date of 11/11/18 at 11:00 AM GMT. Surely this date was intended to matter, and that’s the date we commemorate, not the date the war began nor the date the peace treaty was signed. There is no World War I Victory Day, maybe because there were no winners. The date we celebrate is the day the fighting stopped.
Today we honor our war dead solemnly as we always do. But we don’t stop fighting. Although World War I was supposed to be the war that ended all wars, we’ve had countless wars since, including another doozy in Europe 20 years later. America is involved through backing and proxies in two major wars right now, both right on Europe’s doorstep. And yet our leaders talk about shipping weapons, in Biden’s case, as quickly as possible while he still has a chance.
The people who survived World War I remembered why we should reject warfare. But a long time has gone by since then, and we moderns — especially modern Americans — no longer feel as affected by the horrors of war. Nevertheless, tens of thousands of people have died in Gaza and Ukraine just in the last few years. Surely we too have fresh acres of dead to lament. Shall we continue to kill and mourn?
