We Go Together: On Veterans, Armistice, and Remembrance

Count me as one unencumbered by the supposed difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day. The reasons for which the 11th of November is particularly recalled around the world has everything to do with memorializing the grand tragedy of the First World War. The boys went, the families were broken, and whole societies lay shattered. Once the guns mercifully fell silent on the western front, ‘never again’ became the English refrain. Of course, lasting peace remained, and remains, an illusion in this age.

On this Armistice Day in Belgium, France, Martinique, French Polynesia, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana, Remembrance Day in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Cayman Islands, and Veterans Day in the United States, I propose a minor modification to the American way of recognizing the occasion. Although I do highly recommend, as a start, making vital local connections with veterans, what if we also stepped back and broadened our gaze of thankfulness beyond just the men and women in our own towns and cities? What if we took the opportunity that 11 November affords to also appreciate the friendship of our country’s allies and revere their glorious dead?

In September 1918, the Americans were just arriving on the scene of the Great War. As the 27th and 30th U.S. Infantry Divisions fell in with the Australian Corps—both under the British Fourth Army—in front of the St. Quentin Canal, the heavily fortified and collocated German Hindenburg Line stood as the last stronghold between the Allied Powers and the Rhine. On early morning of the 29th, the American Divisions departed the line towards the Bellicourt Tunnel. One military historian's account follows, quoting from Col. Sidney Minor, Commander, 120th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 30th Infantry Division (“Old Hickory”):

Once the deafening, creeping artillery barrage “came down” ahead, our men gambled with death and plunged into no-man’s-land toward Riqueval’s Canal. They faced three rows of barbed wire, each 30-to-40 feet across and “woven so thick as to resemble a mass of vines and briars intermingled”; six trench lines some 6,000 yards across; and concrete machine-gun emplacements providing enfilading fire.

Dense fog and barrage smoke immediately limited visibility to six yards. Officers lost control. “The success of the attack now depended upon the individual,” Minor continued. Told the German line was too strong, “Companies pledged themselves even if only one man were left. We were determined to leave an open road for the Australians [and] win. Perhaps they were working their way to death or capture, but turn back, never.”

And in many instances, decimated and disordered American companies were indeed fragmented into individual men and squads. Experienced Australian soldiers flowing through and advancing gathered the doughboys and combined their units. The battle was won by the kind of amalgamated force Gen Pershing reviled. The German army—broken by four years of total war—collapsed.

This Veterans Day, let’s grow our scope of, and capacity for thankfulness. Let us not just consider the American volunteers, like those from the Old Hickory Division—under-resourced but stunningly brave national guardsmen thrown into the teeth of the 1918 Imperial German Army. Let us also recall and give thanks for the brave countrymen of our allies. They carried us through the Great War, and have been at our side in every major conflict since. This day means a great deal to them; it is a somber one. It should bind us in that way.

To some of us, the supposed difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day means very little—the day does not belong to this country alone. Our brave went out from their hometowns and into the unknown. And when they did, they were not alone. Let us broaden our gaze, and remember.

Major Mitch Fossum is a staff officer at Headquarters, U.S. Air Force.?The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.