"Remembrance Day"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“Remembrance Day”

November 11, 2010

Ninety-two years ago, at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month, the guns along the “long, white road” went silent. Four years and three months after the start of perhaps the most devastating war the world has ever known, the total destruction that had occurred began to be realized. Sixty-five million men had been mobilized; eight and a half million were killed; twenty-one million wounded and seven and a half million were either missing in action or became prisoners of war – all young men in their prime.

November 11th was commonly known in the United States as Armistice Day until 1954 when President Eisenhower signed legislation changing the name to Veterans Day. But, in my opinion, Remembrance Day seems a more fitting designation.

What made this particular war so terrible was that the continent of Europe had been peaceful for more than four decades following the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. The turn of the century had brought prosperity to Europe. The automobile, electricity and telephones were all recent inventions, increasingly available. Relatively free trade worked to mutual advantage. Music and the arts flourished. But in the dark recesses of industrial areas, companies like Krupp were producing weapons. So that when the armies met in the summer of 1914 it became a clash between the 19th and 20th centuries, with horses being mowed down by machine guns and planes providing reconnaissance on soldiers being provisioned by mules.

In a far different time, but reflecting the mood of proud but naïve soldiers marching to war that summer, words which poet John Pickering wrote in 1567 are prophetic:

“It is good sport to see the strife

Of soldiers in a row.

How merrily they forward march

Their enemies to slay,

With hey, trim and tricksy too,

Their banners they display.”

The War began with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo on June 28, though it would be August 1st before Germany declared war on Russia and August 4th before England declared war on Germany. Ensuing battles were immense. They took months to complete and when they ended troops were usually near where they began – a few feet of mud gained at a cost of thousands of lives. That was especially true for both the Somme and Verdun, battles that lasted six and ten months respectively, ending roughly where they began. Combined, the two battles saw a million two hundred thousand young men die. By the War’s end – the Great War as it was then dubbed – the Balkans, as appears their eternal fate, had suffered more than most. Nine percent of Romania’s soldiers were killed. Serbia lost 16% of hers. The toll was enormous. Ninety percent of Austrian soldiers were casualties, killed, MIA or wounded: 76% of Russia’s, 73% of France’s, 65% of Germany’s and 36% of Great Britain’s. A generation of young men was gone.

Shortly before he died of pneumonia in France in January 1918 and after he had witnessed the horror of the Western Front, Colonel John McCrae wrote the moving and memorable poem, “Flanders Field”. Part of it goes:

“In Flanders Field the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

……………………………..

We are the dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders Field.”

Unlike the first decade of the last century, a time of peace, prosperity and complacency, the first ten years of the Twenty-first Century witnessed the murder of 3000 Americans by Islamic terrorists on 9/11 and has experienced a financial credit crisis that threatened the world’s banking system. We live in a stress-filled world. However, there will be long stretches of joy and satisfaction interrupted by moments of horror. Currently, a lack of complacency serves to keep us on edge, rendering a near-term repeat of that earlier period less likely.

The tragedy of the Great War, the “war to end all wars”, was that it was never really concluded. The armistice in November 1918 ended with the Treaty of Versailles in the spring of 1919. The terms of that treaty were so onerous, however, that a consequence was that it laid the foundation for World War II; thus in many respects the war that began with the “guns of August” in 1914 did not finally conclude until the surrender of the Japanese aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo harbor, in September 1945.

On this day of remembrance it is worth recalling not only the loss of those who died so young, so selflessly and so brutally, but of the vulnerability of the many to the culpability of the few. Smart people do not always make wise decisions.