The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month: a commemoration

Hick Planet magazine

tryna find the grownups table on a hick planet

an unperiodical:

on arts, endeavors, musings, sites, sights, & other senses

Thursday, 2019 November 28th

issue 1

In the spring of 1917, the United States entered what was at that time called the Great War. The eventual stated aims of the US government during this Great War were to establish a “just and secure peace”, and it was often referred to as “the war to end all wars”.

After a year and a half of further fighting, the combatants agreed to an armistice—to lay down their arms—at one particular moment: the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Beginning a year later, on the 11th of November 1919, peoples around the world observed the first holiday to remember that day; Americans called it Armistice Day. All have seen, over the century since, that not all wars were ended, and after having engaged in other ones, the name in America has been changed and the commemoration broadened.

Still Americans come together in remembrance of those who sacrificed for those aims in that war and of the sacrifices of all other veterans. And we have, week before last on the 11th day of this 11th month, 100 years since that first observance and a dozen score and three years since the naissance of the American nation, joined together and have most especially commemorated those who, as Lincoln put it, “gave the last full measure of devotion”.