In Flander's Fields the poppies grow...

[akashiver]

Kurt Vonnegut on Armistice Day:

"So this book is a sidewalk strewn with junk, trash which I throw over my shoulders as I travel in time to November eleventh, nineteen hundred and twenty-two.

I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.

So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.

What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

And all music is.

--Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions (yoinked from matociquala)

In Canada, Armistice Day is now Remembrance Day.

Were I in Canada right now, I'd be down at the memorial cemetery for the Laying of Wreaths, watching the soldiers march past while various dignitaries read the aloud the names of the dead. People would read anti-war poetry and sing various martial hymns. At approximately six minutes from wqhen I'm writing this the two minutes of silence would be declared. Then there'd be the flyby, in which every warplane from past and present would do a formation bombing run on the town while the air-sirens blew. Afterwards we'd listen to a speech about the importance of defending your country while at the same time not letting patriotism lead you into unjust aggression. And the children would be sent to talk to the veterans while everyone else pinned their poppies in the cemetery and then went for cheap juice and biscuits in the library.

The first year I was in the US I expected Veteran's Day to be like Remembrance Day, but it wasn't.

This is the first Remembrance Day I haven't had a poppy to wear. Usually I get my parents to buy one and send it down. This year I forgot. It makes me sad.

I did my two minutes of silence though. Just 'cause.

Comments

[moonandserpent.livejournal.com]

On Armistice Day (and my parents both insisted that it would always really be Armistice Day) my mom and dad would take me to the cemetery where my Uncle Dewey (fought at Iwa Jima, died shortly after WWII) was buried. There, there would often be a quiet gathering here and there of old men standing in the cold.

No poppies, though. No grand reinactments. Just a steadily dwindling number of people remembering the sacrifices they and their loved ones made.

Thanks for sharing your memories. It means a great deal to me. Makes me feel signifgantly less lonely knowing that I'm not the only person thinking about these things or having a private moment of silence this morning.