I first wrote these words well over a decade ago and offered them last year as well. I think they bear repeating.
Today, Veterans Day, began as Armistice Day, marking the end of "The War to End All Wars" also known as World War One, but sadly, failing to achieve its goal, hence the numerical suffix.
For most of the thirty-five nations who fought in it, it lasted the better part of five years, from 1914 to 1918; we in the United States didn't become a combatant until 1917 but made up in ferocity of engagement what we lacked in the length of deployment.
The world a century ago was very different than the one in which we live and is so unlike today that it's as if it were another universe. If we survive as a country and culture for another one hundred years, what will now look like to those here then, I wonder.
There are many observances around the country today. Like ours in Norwich, Connecticut, the ceremonies are often simple with little pomp and circumstance as is probably most befitting to celebrate a well-shared national experience. In 2020, the last year I could find verifiable statistics, there were about eighteen million veterans among us.I'm old now but I can remember the boy I was who listened to a Navy veteran of the War in the Pacific during World War Two, just elected President of the United States, urging us to "...pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty."
-bill kenny
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