Veterans Day, 2011

From Captain Keith Amacker, US Navy (Retired):

Before there were numbers assigned to wars, it was the Great War, the war to end all wars and sometimes the last war…..  It was none of those things but to understand what Veteran’s day means to me and perhaps you we have to know where it came from.

 

The war that began in August 1914 ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 with the German signing of the Armistice.  The United States had chosen to remain neutral until Germany’s use of unrestrictive submarine warfare proved to be the key element in provoking the United States’ entry into the war in April 1917.  In 1915 a German submarine had torpedoed without warning the British passenger steamship Lusitania off the coast of Ireland. Nearly 1,200 persons died, including 128 U.S. citizens.  Germany ceased until Feb 1917 when it announced that it intended to resume torpedoing merchant ships without warning as a result the US declared war in April 1917

 

Despite the armistice, fighting continued on the final day, November 11, 1918.  More men died on the final day of World War I than died on D-Day.  Losses on all sides approached eleven thousand dead, wounded, and missing. Indeed, Armistice Day exceeded the ten thousand casualties suffered by all sides on D-Day.  320 Americans were killed and more than 3,240 seriously wounded.  British losses on November 11 totaled some twenty-four hundred. The French commander of the 80th Régiment d’Infanterie received two simultaneous orders that morning: one to launch an attack at 9 a.m., the other to cease fire at 11.  French losses on the final day were estimated 1,170.

 

The Germans suffered some 4,120 casualties.  Had Marshal Foch heeded the appeal of Matthias Erzberger on November 8 to stop hostilities while the talks went on, some sixty-six hundred lives would likely have been saved. The number of World War I casualties (military and civilian):

*37 million – over 15 million deaths and 22 million wounded.

*Allied Powers lost more than 5 million soldiers and the Central Powers more than 3 million.

 

The Vietnam Memorial holds the names of 58,226 Americans. In Flanders, Belgium, there are about the same number of names — 54,896, to be exact — are written on the Menin Gate outside Ypres.  These are not the names of all who died in a whole war; they are not even the names of all who died on a single battlefield. They commemorate the Britons, together with about 13,000 Canadians and Australians, who died at Ypres between 1914 and August 1917 that  have no marked grave. (A separate memorial lists an additional 34,927 — also without marked graves — who died at Ypres the following year.)

 

To put this in perspective let’s state this in another way.  During World War I, (1,375,800) eleven percent (11%) of France’s entire population were killed or wounded! Eight percent (703,000) (8%) of Great Britain’s population were killed or wounded, and nine percent (1,773,700) (9%) of Germany’s pre-war population were killed or wounded! The US which did not enter the land war in strength until 1918, suffered one-third of one percent (126,000) (0.37%) of its population killed or wounded.

 

Veterans Day is the American name for the international day of remembrance called Armistice Day. It falls on 11 November, the anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that ended World War One.  The same day is observed elsewhere as Remembrance Day or Armistice Day.

 

First commemorated in the United States by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919. Many states made it a legal holiday. Congress passed a resolution in 1926 inviting all Americans to observe the day, and made it a legal holiday nationwide in 1938. is observed annually on November 11 since that date – first as Armistice Day, later as Veterans Day

 

On November 11, 1953, the citizens of Emporia, Kansas staged a Veterans Day observance in lieu of an Armistice Day remembrance. Representative Ed Rees of Emporia, Kansas introduced legislation into the House of Representatives to officially change the name of Armistice Day to Veterans Day  Following a letter-writing campaign to secure the support of all state governors in the observance of this new holiday, the name of the holiday was changed to Veterans Day on 1 June 1954), to honor those who served in all American wars. 

 

The day has since evolved as a time for honoring living veterans who have served in the military during wartime or peacetime.  Memorial Day honors the dead. 

Louisiana Armed Forces Foundation

Captain Amacker is the Director of Homeland Security Studies at Tulane University