It's called Veterans Day now, but once it had a name that was full of history--Armistice Day. It marked, with some cerermony, the end if the longest and bloodiest war mankind had ever known back then--November 11th--the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, people used say.
World War I was a different war, using quaint old versions of weapons--tanks and airplanes, which had greatly changed by the time the next and even bloodier war--II, not I, came along just under thirty years later. And we're still not out of the habit--58,000 Americans died in Vietnam, a much smaller war, some thirty years after WWII. The total number of dead Americans in the Afghan war is not yet known. That war, the dying there has yet to end.
"All we are saying," the Vietnam War protestors used to chant, "is give peace a chance." Must be tough. We haven't done it yet.
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