Veterans Day

Blackfive reprints a Mike Royko column on the meaning of Veterans Day.

A good read and the proper sentiment.

For many Americans, Veterans Day is nothing more than an inconvenience; a day when government workers mysteriously vanish while everyone else continues to do their jobs.

Certainly the season doesn't lend itself to parades or displays.  Memorial Day has far better weather for that kind of thing.

Yet in a sense, it is appropriate that we honor our soldiers in a cold, bleak time of the year.

November 11 marks the end of World War I, which is why the date was chosen.

The end of that war - the first truly modern war - is a milestone.  It is what separated past generations of soldiers from future ones.

World War I saw the end of battle flags, of fighting for monarchies or dynasties, of empire and of the old conventions of warfare.

The epoch that stretches before us is one in which killing is impersonalized, far removed from drums and bugles.

Those who have served know what it feels like to be a number, a faceless cog in a massive machine.  That is the legacy of modern war.

There is therefore no better time to honor our soldiers than on a day when the sky is grey, the wind cold and the trees are bare.

For our soldiers, war is always living on the edge of winter.  They do this so that the rest of us may know the joy of spring.

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[Neuroto]

"War, once cruel and magnificent, has now been rendered cruel and squalid."

Winston Churchill