Tomorrow we honor the veterans of our nation’s military, people who served with courage and bravery. It’s a time for all of us to reflect on the sacrifice so many have quietly made so we can live the lives that we take for granted.
And it’s a time to consider, if only briefly, the conflict that led to this national day of reflection.
It was a global war that began – at least as all students were taught back in my day – on June 28, 1914, when a lone anarchist assassinated the Archduke of Austria, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife Sophie, the Duchess of Hohenberg, as they rode in an open carriage through the streets of Sarajevo, beginning a growing tit-for-tat among the always-feuding countries in Europe.
It expanded to include almost every nation in Europe and plenty outside it, like Japan. And our country, across an ocean, entered the fray in 1917 when the Germans began sinking merchant ships on the Atlantic, including five vessels flying the American flag.
In the course of its four-plus years, that war introduced chemical weapons, widespread use of machine guns and heavy artillery, and the particular horror of trench warfare. Tanks were invented and deployed for the first time. World, welcome to the 20th century.
The horror – and slaughter – didn’t end until November 11, 1918, when the warring nations signed an armistice at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Ergo, Armistice Day!
Afterward we sought a name for the just-ended conflict. The Great War? “Great” somehow sounded wrong. The European War was another contender, except that the war involved more than just Europe.
George Kennan, a noted American diplomat and scholar, made a pitch for his favorite, “the Seminal Catastrophe of this century,” although it turned out much worse was to come. The War to End All Wars became a great favorite. Until, sadly, it proved not to be.
Now we call the conflict World War I, because not long after, we had another global war – World War II, with even more catastrophic results than those of the first. It was followed by other wars – in Korea, in Vietnam, in Afghanistan and in Iraq, not to mention any number of lesser but no less lethal conflicts we’ve sent our soldiers to fight and to die in. And they won’t be the last.
In 1938, Armistice Day was officially renamed Veterans Day by Congress to honor veterans of all this country’s wars, past and – sadly – future.
Today, according to one estimate, the U.S. has troops deployed in more than 150 countries around the globe, with at least 170,000 active personnel serving outside this country and its territories.
For example, it was only last year – when four of our soldiers were killed in an ambush there – that we learned we had troops stationed in Niger, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map.
Tomorrow we’ll honor the sacrifice of those men, as we honor all those who have served their country, on and off the battlefield.
The National Veterans Day Observance will be held at Arlington National Cemetery just outside the District of Columbia, where a bugler will send the haunting notes of taps into the chill November air at precisely 11 a.m., a ceremony that will be duplicated at the New Hampshire State Veterans Cemetery in Boscawen.
The ceremonies are moving to all who see them.
President Trump won’t be there – he has opted instead to view a Veterans Day parade in New York City – but his older son and namesake still remembers being moved the first time he saw his father laying a wreath at Arlington.
In his recent book, Donald Trump Jr. reflected on seeing his father in front of the Tomb of the Unknowns, surrounded by more than 400,000 graves, and listening to the Army Band playing taps. He recalled thinking that the Trump family had also suffered, and this was only the beginning, he wrote.
“In that moment, I also thought of all the attacks we’d already suffered as a family, and about all the sacrifices we’d have to make to help my father succeed – voluntarily giving up a huge chunk of our business and all international deals to avoid the appearance that we were ‘profiting off the office,’ ” Trump Jr. wrote.
Those are indeed memorable words to contemplate this Veterans Day.
(“Monitor” columnist Katy Burns lives in Bow.)