Thoughts Towards a Better World – Frequent personal commentaries on diverse topics.

Today, November 11, is an important commemorative day. Historically it was called Armistice Day; generally in Europe it seems to go by Remembrance Day; in the U.S. since the 1950s it’s been designated Veterans Day. In every instance it brings to public attention the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, when WWI officially ended.

Of course, such endings are always ragged, and the end of WWI was as well. But the war officially ended, and with it came the hopes and dreams of no more war which, in this case, spawned the even more deadly WWII and all of the assorted conflicts which followed, including the current war with Iran.

But today honors veterans – I am one (1962-63 – U.S. Army) – of the people who have served in various ways over the years. In my case, two brothers are both Vietnam veterans (Air Force officers), and grandson Spencer is a Marine Sergeant, presently on assignment for a year as a Marine recruiter. On and on.

Personally, I’m a peacenik, one of the lucky Vietnam-era veterans who was being trained for but never had to go to Vietnam. I’ve never regretted military service, even if it was not always agreeable. Today I wore my Army dog tags to a program across the Mississippi from me. The program was remarkable and informative, featuring four panelists with emphasis on the Vietnam era. See NOTE at end of this post.

My particular focus this day is my Uncle Frank Bernard, Dad’s brother, KIA on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. (Photo of Frank in Honolulu below, some time before December 7, ’41) Frank was one of the crew who went down with the ship. His entire Navy career, 1936-41, was ship fitter on the Arizona. In early December two of my daughters will be at Pearl Harbor for a Disinterment Ceremony, continuing a process made possible by DNA technology to hopefully identify human remains recovered and interred for 85 years for which there was no identity. (See the first three paragraphs of the letter which I received in May 2026: Arizona Battleship disinternment.) There is no assurance that Uncle Frank’s remains,, or any other crew will be positively identified, but we’re grateful for the efforts. Third paragraph from the end of the letter is the link for live stream viewing.

Frank Bernard, Honolulu pre-Dec. 7, 1941

NOTE: The panel on Veteran’s Day in West St. Paul MN; Gary Gilson, Stephen Young, Samuel Verdeja, and Larry Johnson. Larry is a long time good friend and author of a well received book ‘Sixty One’. The pdf identifies two on-line videos by Gary Gilson, and four books by Stephen Young: Gary Gilson, Stephen Young.

Two personal heroes of mine are Joe Schwartzberg and Lynn Elling. Since 2008, I’ve had a website largely dedicated to them. Both were military officers at one point in their lives, Army and Navy, respectively. https://amillioncopies.info/.

POSTNOTE: Overnight came a very pertinent post on Veteran’s Day by Heather Cox Richardson on the topic of Veterans Day. Most of my personal career was representing public school teachers. During that period (till retirement in 2000), the American Legion was a key sponsor of American Education Week in public schools. In fact, programs like AEW were key reasons why the American Legion was formed after WWI.

COMMENTS:

from Larry: (one of the speakers at the panel referenced above): I [was] on the 10-11:30 panel … with veteran friends, Gary Gilson and Sam Verdeja. Gary is a journalist and past director of the Minnesota News Council. Sam has worked in public policy, especially as it impacts Veterans. My place on the panel is as someone who has worked with children all my life, and as an intense volunteer with VETERAN RESILIENCE PROJECT. On my 61st birthday I did a 61 mile hike calling for an end to wars having more to do with bottom line profits than legitimate defense. The walk also called for an end to obfuscation of Veteran care, especially for mental health and exposure to war toxins. At 11 I will ring the Armistice Bell I made with other Veterans on a 2013 State Arts Board grant, calling back to a time when even Presidents made resounding speeches saying, “We’re gathered to honor all those who served. There is no greater tribute we could pay than to work hard so that many fewer individual need to make the sacrifice that make them Veterans.”

from Sandy: Thanks for sharing!

from SAK:

I am sorry to read on your web page about those who fought & died, happy to read about those who returned from the war unharmed. Sadly many died fighting very shortly before the armistice was declared. One such was a major British poet, Wilfred Owen. His mother received the telegram as the bells were ringing on the 11^th of November, 1918. What a happier world it would have been had the armistice been declared at the start of the war & spared all these young men – aside from the civilians. . .

Owen was not one of those who were enthusiastic about violence & war at all having seen the effect of poison gas & experienced the trenches. A poem that comes to mind is Dulce et Decorum est which refers to a line from Horace meaning it is sweet and proper to die for the country, except that Owen’s last stanza declares this line from Horace to be “the old lie”:

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer,
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

from Remi:

TO BE CANADIAN ON REMEMBRANCE DAY — MAÎTRES CHEZ-NOUS

During World War II, the Canadian military was a formidable force. After Normandy, the First Canadian Army fought through France and Belgium to the Netherlands. My father was stationed in Belgium in September 1944 as part of that campaign.

The First Canadian Army led a ferocious campaign to expel German forces from Walcheren Island in the Netherlands, one of the bloodiest campaigns of the war for Canadian forces. After the island was liberated, my father was deployed there with other Canadian soldiers to prevent a German counterattack. They stayed until the Canadian Army completed the liberation of the Netherlands in May 1945. He was just a few miles across the water from enemy-held territory.

While stationed in Belgium, my father was also only a few miles from Flanders Fields, where so many Canadian soldiers had fallen during the First World War. Every Remembrance Day, at our town’s ceremony, he recited In Flanders Fields. He did so year after year, until Alzheimer’s disease began to take its toll. We were there when he struggled to recite the poem for the last time. Some of us cried.

In liberated Dutch towns, Canadian soldiers were welcomed by overjoyed and starving civilians who had endured four years of Nazi occupation. Soldiers shared their rations and gave chocolate to children who had never tasted it. Over the years, my father received letters from some of the grateful people he had met. Thousands of Canadians who died liberating the Netherlands are still honoured in cemeteries throughout the country.

By the end of the war, Canada had the fourth-largest armed forces in the world. Yet Canadian soldiers were still officially British subjects. My maternal grandfather, born on the shores of the Black Sea to parents of German ancestry, became a British subject by naturalization—his 1941 Canadian passport, which also bears my grandmother’s name, records that status. The war marked an important turning point in Canada’s emergence as a nation. The sacrifices of its soldiers helped establish Canada’s place in the world and strengthen its national identity.

After the war, my father waited almost a year in Paris to be repatriated. He was billeted with a French-speaking family. He once told me that his parents didn’t speak “real” French. He was wrong. They spoke North American French. The French pioneers of New France and the English-speaking settlers who followed from the British Isles and the American colonies came from different shores, but over generations both developed distinctive North American languages and cultures, shaped by the same continent. North American French was passed down by the young women who crossed the Atlantic nearly 400 years ago and became the mothers of a continent. Their descendants now number more than 12 million, half of whom live in the United States.

Many of these women were poor orphans known as “les Filles du Roi” (the King’s Daughters).

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