There are two very distinctive cultures which observe the end of World War I: those who celebrate Armistice Day and those who celebrate Veteran’s Day.

Veterans Day as observed in the United States is related to Armistice Day in Europe. Today on November 11, the date of the signing of the cease fire in 1918, signed at 5 am but in effect on the 11th hour of the 11th day, is recalled by the French as a remembrance of loss and the wanton destruction of war.

Igniting across the global, spread transcontinentally through the colonial holdings of the warring nations, World War I  was fought most brutally on French and Belgium soil, with battlefield casualties of a magnitude that human beings are almost incapable of comprehending. At the First Battle of the Marne in 1914, the French incurred 250,000 losses, with German losses estimated at the same magnitude, or close to 500,000 men at arms consumed during one major engagement, and that was only the beginning. (1)

It was the “War to End All Wars,” a stunning loss of 1.4 million French soldiers alone, 10.5% of the French male population, with overall combat-related deaths and crippling injury exceeding ten million.  Americans, with victory achieved, but appalled at the squalor and horror of the trenches and observing the scenes of years of destruction, brushed the dust and grime off their uniforms and went home, muttering “another European War.”

French schoolbooks teach the horror of the war, and focus on the massive mortality amongst the generation of men who fought it. They detail to each new generation of children the suffering and the severe hardships of the populations which fled their homes and towns, running to be clear of the bombardments and combat. The lingering spiritual toll has been a cynical dismissal of purpose: the Europeans and especially the French ask if there is anything worth fighting for to justify loss of human life.

That Europe, especially France, Belgium and Britain, was shell-shocked by this war cannot be understated in order to understand the mindset behind how they have conducted their national defense and foreign policy since. This cynicism was the base on which appeasement was embraced over standing firm for principles, and its folly was soon exposed.

But Armistice wasn’t peace. It was more promise than delivery, more hope than reality, as fighting and battlefield dying continued after the famous 11th hour declaration of secession of hostilities.

 “There followed in early 1919 the Paris Peace Conference of victorious nations and the resulting Treaty of Versailles. Germany was stripped of territories and ordered to pay huge war reparations. Its military forces were restricted and it was forced to admit full guilt for the war. An international League of Nations was established to resolve future conflicts. The exultant Allied leaders went home, satisfied that they had achieved a great diplomatic triumph. But had they?
When the fighting stopped, not one Allied soldier on the Western front stood on one square foot of German territory. The four years of fighting on the Western Front had occurred solely in Belgium and France (Holland was neutral in the First World War). Germany had surrendered while her troops were still occupying foreign territory. To most Germans, this seemed incredible.

A nondescript German corporal, recovering from poison gas wounds, was enraged. Civilians back home had obviously betrayed the country. That corporal’s name was Adolf Hitler. More would be heard from him in coming years.” (2)

Recovering from his wounds on the other side of the border in France, a young American officer, one of a handful of survivors of a deadly engagement, and hating the man-eating trenches and the death they represented, took back a different lesson as he stood on the abandoned battlefields, and sternly surveyed the desolate scene. When he was asked why he was still surveying the French countryside as everyone was packing to leave, he replied, with an uncanny sense of unfinished business,  “The next war is going to be right here and I am going to be in it.”

General George Patton summed up the national character which formed him: “America loves a winner. America will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise a coward; Americans play to win.”

The cultures of these two wounded veterans of World War I, the War to End All Wars, met square-on at that great battlefield of Europe, two decades later.

 Hitler was in reach of being the most powerful emperor ever to have breathed the air of Europe, but led by clear-eyed men of purpose like Patton, derided by Hitler as “soft, weak, lazy and fat,” Americans surged across North Africa, poured ashore in Italy and charged through the countryside of the beaten and capitulated French, relieved the cornered and isolated British and shattered the seemingly unstoppable war machines of the socialist Hitler, the fascist Mussolini, then crushed them all and then turned their grim resolve to the imperialistic Tojo, who stood astride the battered and conquered nations of Asia, his juggernaut poised to overwhelm Australia.  

After Hitler demanded he needed Czechsolvakia and Austria, the Europeans  gave up  entire nations in exchange  for signed documents of peace,  and got war anyway.  Emboldened by that example, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor,  expecting the same response, that the United States would also sign for peace.    Americans didn’t need President Roosevelt to tell them it was war, they already knew it and they knew what had to be done.   Imperial Japan had made a mortal mistake, thinking Americans were just like Europeans, lacking in a vision of eternal truths of right and wrong, good and evil.  The sleeping tiger had been awakened.   One nation infused with  sense of greater purpose, that this was evil and men were called to fight it, freely left security,  headed knowingly into danger and halted the onslaught.

American soldiers, farm boys, cabbies, waiters, sons of carpenters and bankers, brick layers and doctors, were the ones who threw open the gates of the smoke-shrouded death camps, and beheld a vision of hell, then set their jaws and gritted their teeth and showed the world the proof of the cruelty and depravity of the fascist state, and marched the people through so they could not claim they “didn’t know.”

In this case, the pen was not mightier than the sword.  And when the pens finally came out, the American sword made sure the aggreements would be honored.

In contrast to the anguished sorrow of an empty loss and faith in signatures on a paper that didn’t translate on the battlefield, our Veterans Day observances for the sacrifices of our fighting men are grave and solemn, but still retain a sense of a greater purpose to life than simply surviving. Our memorials and remembrances retain a pride, placing the sacrifices of every fallen soldier and veteran who carried his wounds through his life into the framework of a greater and eternal purpose.

America transported her soldiers to foreign lands, the best we had – the prime of our young men – to stand beside our allies, upended a brutal stalemate and ended two wars. War is everything the pacifists proclaim, even worse as they have not seen with their own eyes what soldiers have seen, but it is no peace to capitulate to evil. That’s just surrender; a bended knee to evil is the path to desolation, despair and destruction.

Was it worth it in human costs for Americans to leave their homes and fight on foreign fields?

No one can image without a shudder of horror what Europe and the world would be like today had Hitler and his counterpart Tojo triumphed.  And heeding the mistake made in 1919 of leaving too soon, Americans in 1945 stayed to provide security, stability, food, shelter and helped a devastated Europe and Asia develop democratic governance, holding firm for decades until the last of the empires collapsed, the Soviet Union.  

Yes, it was worth it.  By the Word of God, not a soul who should be saved is lost. There is a purpose; good is worth fighting for.  Peace is a curious thing. It has to be fought for and protected.

“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died.

Rather we should thank God that such men lived.”

 - General George S. Patton, Jr

As we remember those who served before you, for all our men and women in uniform today who worked hard while people slept, who took on challenges and accepted discipline and risk, deployed far from our life of ease, thank you and God bless you for your service to our nation. 

*****

 1) http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/ww1/11-11-11.htm
2) http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Armistice+left+unfinished/5684793/story.html#ixzz1dOVk1AQw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF5PBuPCd0A&feature=related

Inadequate Peace:
http://www.greatwar.nl/versailles/versail-summary.html  http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/treatyofversailles/p/overtofvers.htm  

http://www.military-quotes.com/Patton.htm