Essay: Lest We Forget - 11.9.09

Veterans Day is Wednesday. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry suggests we think a little more about what the day really means.

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Wednesday is Veterans Day, which means that the banks will be closed, there won’t be any mail delivery, and a lot of government workers will get the day off. For most of us, that’s what the day means. For too many of us, that’s all that it means.

This day was once the most eagerly greeted day in history. At eleven o’ clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, Nov. 11, 1918, the guns stopped firing and World War I came to an end.

Nine million had died, most of them young men in uniform. The United States, which got into the war quite late, got off lightly, losing only 116,000, more from disease than battle. Yet millions of young men in France, Germany and Great Britain were wiped out.

History had never seen a war like that before. Nobody thought they’d see one again. When the veterans came home to America, first different states, then the federal government, made this day an official national holiday. They called it Armistice Day, because the signing of an armistice ended what was then called “the Great War.“

Back in the 1920s and 1930s, a lot of people in Michigan and elsewhere thought that if we kept the memory of the horror alive, it might not happen again. Governors and Senators would say that at Armistice Day ceremonies. Yet their hopes for peace were doomed.

The peace treaty that ended World War I was so unfair it led to the coming of another war that was far more terrible. When it ended, with far more dead, Congress changed the name to Veterans Day, and suggested that we use it to honor all veterans of all wars.

Yet today it gets overlooked. For one thing, we have another veterans’ holiday, Memorial Day, which happens on a three-day weekend in spring when the weather is usually nice.

People have picnics and cookouts then. Nobody does anything fun on a Wednesday in November. But there are a few who do the right thing, and remember. There will be a parade in downtown Grand Rapids Wednesday night, starting at 7. The University of Michigan-Flint will hold a free remembrance concert that morning.

And those who still care will gather for ceremonies in cemeteries and town halls in Flushing and Burton, in Clio and Swartz Creek and many other places all across this state. At Detroit‘s historic Elmwood Cemetery, they will honor the graves of the 102nd Colored Infantry Regiment from the Civil War.

Today, there is only one man still alive in the nation who was in uniform the day the guns stopped firing in World War I. Frank Buckles is a Missouri native who is 108 years old.

He was told he was fighting a war to end all wars, but he lived to see wars happen again and again.

Most of the college students I teach know almost nothing about World War I, not even when it was. That strikes me as not only disrespectful of the past, but highly dangerous for the future.

Cliches are sometimes true. If we don’t remember the past, we do indeed tend to repeat it. When I read the headlines about Afghanistan, I remember growing up in the shadow of Vietnam. And sometimes I ask myself …“I wonder what Frank Buckles thinks?”

Comments

[Anonymous]

I am sorry, Jack: If a college student, who is far enough along in their degree-program studies to be taking a journalism class from you, doesn't know about World War I, including nuanced information about the assasination of Archduke Ferdinand at Sarjevo, the identities of the allied forces on both sides, what the sinking of the Lusitania meant, how and when the U.S. entered the war, about Alvin York, trench warfare, mustard gas, the Somme, Verdun, and the Treaty of Versailles, then I don't know how, or why, those students would hope to get a real, live job as a journalist. Isn't anybody studying any history at all in high school? Don't college-level journalism students need to have a passing knowledge of history? Or has history now been confined to the study of 'American wars of aggression against people of color?'

[Jack Lessenberry]

There are some superb history teachers; I was married to one of the nation's best. But my students never heard of any of those battles, and often ask me if I remember World War II, though they know I am 57. This is a frightening problem.

[Anonymous]

You know, Jack, the sad thing is that history for younger students of today isn't less acessible. It is MORE accessible. Let's say you are a lazy teenager who just likes watching tv. Okay, so watch. If you have seen "Patton," "Band of Brothers," and "Saving Private Ryan," (none of which had been made when Jack Lessenberry or I went to high school) you have thereby been spoon-fed enough of the history of D-Day to have some sort of basic understanding of the greater event, even if you are more or less determined to remain ignorant. Indeed, those television presentations ought to have given even the most vaguely curious high schooler reason enough to at least put his U.S. history or modern European history courses in context, if not awaken a curiosity to read and learn more.

[Thrasher]

I am going to ignore any and all events which celebrate WAR and the mercenaries of War..

There is nothing of value in events which celebrate the insanity, evil and depravity of War

[Anonymous]

Well, there you go, Thrasher! History without war! All that those boys needed at Little Round Top, at Point du Hoc, in Hue and in Fallujah, was just some better ideas, through an alternative think tank!

[Thrasher]

Thanks..I knew you would appreciate my comments...

[Brenda]

Thrasher once again on the cutting edge of stupidity.