Our Deepest Gratitude

A reflection for this solemn day of remembrance

The 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month.

Such was the exact moment in 1918 that the German Empire and the Allied Powers declared an Armistice— both sides would agree to lay down their weapons and prepare for the end of the four devastating years of World War I. On November 11, 107 years ago, following six weeks of intensive negotiations between Germany, the United States, and the Entente, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, France’s highest-ranking general, and other allied representatives sat down with the embattled German delegation in a railcar in the French village of Compiegne to dictate the terms of peace. Germany, in a state of military, political, and economic disarray, had little choice but to accept Foch’s punitive terms that not only stipulated a withdrawal from the Western front but also a German retreat and allied occupation of all German territories west of the Rhine River. Of course, we all know now how this arrangement was received by the German people.

On a personal note, back in the summer of 2015, along with a study group from college, I was lucky enough to visit Compiegne and step into that very railcar where the Armistice was signed. If any of you ever make it to Compiegne, the solemn atmosphere will most certainly overwhelm you, as it overwhelmed me. No wonder Adolf Hitler chose the exact same location and exact same railcar, to show the world in 1940 that the formerly victorious France was now on the receiving end of the very humiliation once imposed on his country.

Today, November 11 remains a national holiday for multiple countries directly impacted by the war. In 1926, the United States Congress passed a resolution directing all federal buildings to display the national flag to commemorate the Armistice “with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations” and do so “in schools and churches, or other suitable places.” In 1954, Congress renamed Armistice Day, by then a legal holiday, to Veterans’ Day to honor American veterans and their service and sacrifices in all wars, not just World War I. With President Dwight Eisnenower’s official proclamation, Veterans’ Day was institutionalized in the American calendar. Today, while Veterans Day is not a formal day off from work and school (perhaps this should change), Americans still celebrate it with parades, commemorative events, and wreath-laying ceremonies across the country.

In contrast with the often celebratory nature of Veterans Day in the United States, Remembrance Day in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth nations such as Canada is a far more somber affair. Unlike the US holiday, Remembrance Day is explicitly a commemoration of soldiers who died in the service of the Crown, while US Veterans’ Day honors all veterans, living or dead. Commemorative events always occur on the second Sunday of November, obliviating the need to declare a formal holiday from school and work. On Remembrance Sunday, the King, Prince of Wales, (both dressed in military uniform) and Prime Minister all lay wreaths of poppies upon The Cenotaph, a memorial to Britain’s war dead located in the middle of Whitehall, Britain’s equivalent of Pennsylvania Avenue. Why poppies, you may ask? In 1915, upon gazing at the makeshift graves of his fallen comrades, Canadian Lieutenant John McCrae penned In Flanders Fields, a melancholy reflection of the grim reality of war juxtaposed with the hope of red poppies sprouting between the crosses.

Tragically, McCrae died of Pneumonia in 1918. You can visit his grave in Wimereux Cemetery in Northern France today. And if you are interested in watching this year’s entire Remembrance Day ceremony in London, complete with two minutes of national silence, you can do so here.

Even less well known in the United States than Remembrance Day in Britain (you may have seen Brits or Canadians wearing the red poppy) is Independence Day in Poland. On the same day as the fateful signing of the Armistice in Compiegne, Polish general and Founding Father Josef Piłsudski heard of the capitulation and declared the reformation, after more than a century of partition and occupation, of a new Polish state. What few Westerners know is that while the guns fell silent on the Western Front on November 11, 1918, Eastern Europe remained a war zone for several years afterwards. Since most Germans at the time, not only a certain Austrian painter, saw the Poles as an inferior ‘tribe’ unworthy of statehood, any notion of Polish independence was heresy. Thus, the bloody war with Piłsudski’s forces continued for eight more months until Germany was forced to withdraw by the victorious Allied Powers through the Versailles Treaty.

Today, Poles celebrate Piłsudski’s declaration of independence with an awe-inspiring, and sometimes to foreigners, frightening display of patriotism with ubiquitous bicolor Biało-Czerwoni flags and red flares in the Central Square in downtown Warsaw. While this “Independence March,” or Marsz Niepodległości (don’t worry, none of you need to learn how to pronounce that) is commonly characterized as a sinister “far-right” march of ultranationalists and antisemites, in reality, it is just a harmless, albeit quite intense and defiant, celebration of overcoming the many hardships and trials the Polish nation has suffered for centuries on end. And despite attempts to wipe it from existence, Poland has endured, giving patriotic Poles every right to honor the day when their nation rose like a phoenix from the ashes of partition and repression.

Unlike the Poles, we Americans have no living memory of fighting for our independent existence. While most of us have a friend or relative who has served at some point, our gratitude, of which this author is no exception, manifests in a more abstract manner. We may be curious about their stories or utter a terse, empty “thank you for your service,” but we often do so as a performative courtesy, not as a profound expression of gratitude. As a student of history, I now know something many other Americans still fail to grasp. Without the millions of Americans generation after generation who made the willing decision to say goodbye to their families not knowing whether or not they would ever hug their parents or hold their children again, our world today would operate in the manner it always had before the birth of the United States: with conflict and tyranny as the norm.

Therefore, this Veterans Day, whether you are an American, a Pole, a Brit, or a citizen of any other Western nation, I implore all my readers to reach out to the veterans in your lives, and offer them, through word or deed, your sincerest Thank You.