Remembering Armistice Day

Before there was Veterans Day, there was Armistice Day.

That's what they used to call it when I was growing up, remembering the armistice that went into effect at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918 -- the armistice that marked the end of the horrific four-year slaughter known as the Great War.

Now we call it Veterans Day, and it's a time for remembering and honoring not only all those who once served in our armed forces, but all those who are doing so now. The trouble with honoring our warriors, though, is that we end up honoring our wars as well.

I remember a scene from a 1964 film called The Americanization of Emily, written by Paddy Chayevsky: Charlie Madison, an American naval officer stationed in England during World War II, is having tea with his English girlfriend, Emily Barham, and her mother. Mrs. Barham seems to be in denial about her husband's death in the war, believing that he is still alive and nobly fighting on for God and country....

CHARLIE: I don't trust people who make bitter reflections about war, Mrs. Barham. It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is. It's always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parade.

EMILY: That was unkind, Charlie, and very rude.

CHARLIE: We shall never end war, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on ministers and generals, war-mongering imperialists, or all the other banal bogeys. It's the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers. The rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widow's weeds like nuns, Mrs. Barham, and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices. My brother died at Anzio.

EMILY: I didn't know that, Charlie.

CHARLIE: Yes, an everyday soldier's death, no special heroism involved. We buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud.

MRS. BARHAM: You're very hard on your mother. It seems a harmless enough pretense to me.

CHARLIE: No, Mrs. Barham. No, you see, now my other brother can't wait to reach enlistment age. That'll be in September.

MRS. BARHAM: Oh, Lord.

CHARLIE: It may be ministers and generals who blunder us into wars, Mrs. Barham, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution. What has my mother got for pretending bravery was admirable? She's under constant sedation, terrified she may wake up one morning, and find her last son has run off to be brave. I don't think I was rude, or unkind before, do you Mrs. Barham?

I think it's important that we not "perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices." I think it's worth remembering that Veterans Day started out as the commemoration of the end of a war. If only it could be so again.