Next Thursday, November 11, is Veterans Day. In contrast to Memorial Day, which honors those military personnel who gave their lives in service to our country, Veterans Day pays tribute to all who have served in the military, past and present.Veterans Day originated as Armistice Day, which was first celebrated on November 11, 1919, the one-year anniversary of the end of World War I. Congress passed a resolution in 1926 for an annual observance, and November 11 became a national holiday beginning in 1938. In 1954, with both World War II and the Korean War in the recent past, the day’s name was changed to Veterans Day to honor American veterans of all wars.The Armistice signed at the “11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month” of 1918 brought World War I, the so-called “War to End All Wars,” to an end. But sadly, that war did not end war at all, and since then, our nation has continued to engage in military action around the globe on a pretty regular basis.One hundred and three years ago, the “Great War” earned its name in the most brutally appropriate fashion. It was war as had never been experienced before in human history. For the first time, each side engaged all its resources – military, industrial, and human – in an all-out effort to annihilate the enemy.The war was unprecedented in scale. It wreaked havoc on physical and emotional levels theretofore unseen. It killed and mutilated an entire generation of young men in Europe. It introduced technological horrors such as mustard gas, paving the way for chemical and biological warfare. It saw the first use of machine guns, tanks, and other weaponry which greatly increased the efficiency and speed with which human lives could be snuffed out.By the end of it, an estimated ten million soldiers were dead. And as the Great War was ending, a catastrophic flu pandemic was sweeping the globe, killing millions more.So when the Armistice was signed, the entire planet was in desperate need of hope. The war was dubbed the “War to End All Wars,” with an optimism that now appears naive, since just two decades later, the world was again at war.And over a century later, we still go to war. The way we conduct wars is very different, but – we still fight wars. It makes you wonder if people will ever learn ...
