Veteran's Day Post

[catscradle]

It's Veteran’s Day and I hope most of us see this day as something more than a day off work or worse yet, griping that you didn't get today off while all those government workers and bank tellers do. Though if it were up to me, all government workers (specifically all congressional workers, judges and yes, the President and his cronies in the executive branch) would be manning their post and doing everything in their power to see that our veterans are taken care of. It'd be nice if our soldier's got the day off. No can do, I guess.

This day means something to me. About 7 years ago I sat back one November 11th bored. Not sure what to do with my time, I asked my brother-in-law for some advice. John told me to go read All Quiet on the Western Front, so I stopped off at Barnes and Nobles and bought the book. By the end of the day I was flatened. It was one of those books that makes you wonder how you're going to get up and do anything else ever again. I couldn't turn on the radio or watch TV. All I could do was sit there and stare at the book. I've had a bit of an obsession with WWI ever since.

But thinking back today on the book and reflecting on what's going on now in Iraq and all the other prior wars leading up to this one - I've noticed that not much has changed. There's talk of war. Excitement leading up to war. Persecution of the people protesting the war. And then there's the great disillusionment where in even the once-supporters start wondering why the hell we're fighting at all. With the exception of WWII, I can't think of a single war that doesn't follow this formula. Why the hell are we fighting?

I don't know. Today, some say it's oil, others say Bush is on some jacked up crusade against terrorism, still others really believe that it's about freedom and the American way of life. I just think it's a tragedy and I hope that everyone that's been sent to fight this thing on either side comes out alive. And more than alive, with the same quality of life they had before going into it.

November 11th used to be called Armistice Day to mark the end of "The Great War" or the so called "War to End All Wars" - but it unfortunately didn't work out that way and now we have Veteran’s Day instead. And we need a day to honor our veterans. Memorial Day honors the dead. We need a day to honor the living. Still, I find it sad that there is no longer an Armistice Day. Wouldn't it be nice if we could remember the day when all war ceased?

I'd like to post a song. It was written by a man named Eric Bogle. Some of you that follow the folk music circuit may have heard of him. I got to hear this song from the man at O'Flahery's Iris Pub when he came to New Orleans. Listen to it.

Posted with Permission:The Green Field's of France (aka No Man's Land)

Did they beat the drum slowly did they sound the fife lowly
did the rifles fire or' ye as they lowered you down

Veteran's Day News Links:

From the IndyStar: Making the troops pay twice

When Democrats tried to insert health insurance and other personnel benefits into the $87 billion appropriation for Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House shot them down.

When Democrats tried to replace $1.3 billion of the $1.8 billion shortfall in the pending VA health care budget bill, the White House threatened a veto.

On and on it goes.

And from Working for a Change:

Cannon Fodder Day?
On government’s systematic abandonment of America’s veterans -- current and future

Younger vets from Gulf War I continue to be plagued by mysterious illnesses that the VA generally continues to refuse to acknowledge or treat as service-related. And now, American soldiers are back in Iraq, trapped in a nightmare scenario. Some aren't coming home alive. Rumors abound that many who are coming home are suffering even more extensively and seriously from mystery maladies. For all of this, the VA and the Bush Administration are stonewalling pleas from vet groups, young and old alike.

Comments

[wiebke.livejournal.com]

I appreciated having your post to read today; it did force me to slow down and reflect.

I remember when I was in fourth or fifth grade and it was near Veteran's Day, we all got sent home to ask who in our family had served in wars. I had expected my mom would tell me my grandparents and my uncle or maybe even my dad had, but she just shrugged and said "not really."

Of course somehow mom had skipped over her own father. I think it might have been on purpose; she grew up thinking it would be deadly to admit her father had been in the German army -- at any time.

My grandfather was 16 years old when he was drafted into the Kaiser's army during WWI. He went into the trenches and, as he told his family, ate a ton of potatoes and corned beef hash as rations. He finally ended up being gassed with chlorine (?) gas, which took him out of service and did some damage to his lungs.

It was a few years after that war, which destroyed a fair portion of his home city of Bremerhaven and as we all know, put Germany in dire straights economically and socially, that he and his brother joined the merchant marine and jumped ship in the U.S. Of course, once he was in America, he never spoke about having been in the German army; there was a great deal of prejudice against Germans, which got worse and worse. He had to get new birth certificates in the 1930s and they ended up being stamped all over with swastikas, so effectively for decades he couldn't show people his papers, they would all react to him as if he was a Nazi or something.

A bit of a ramble for me but again, I appreciate your post.

[catscradle.livejournal.com]

Thanks :)

And the reason I love All Quiet on the Western Front so much is that it tells WWI from the viewpoint of a German soldier. Funny that a good 70% of people that read that book don't even realize that the main character is not one of the alies. It's a good exercise in humanizing the enemy.

So few people realize that WWI Germany and WWII Germany are completely different Germanies - and even still, your average soldier during WWII was not a Nazi. Or that the rampant antisemitism was also prevalent in France and many alied and occupied territories during the war. Hell, it was due to the US not lifting it's heavy immigration laws set in place in the early 1920s that made it impossible for Jews and other refugees to escape the concentration camps - and that was well after the US knew what was going on. But people never think about that. =P

[wiebke.livejournal.com]

I know... I started studying German in ninth grade and ended up with a minor in it. People have said some truly STUPID stuff to me about Germany.

My grandparents both left Germany after WWI and settled in the Bronx. My mom grew up in a very tight-knit German community... surrounded in large part by Jewish neighbors. I think that would be a cool movie.

WWI

[wiebke.livejournal.com]

I just found this article on Alternet that ties in with what you wrote quite nicely:

It's Never Over, Over There

Gruesome.