Off Topic: Armistice day

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

On the 11th hour of the 11th day...



...the guns fell silent.

I don't have much in the way of commentary except that to romanticize war is to be far removed from it's reality, and that on some level I wish that the US called Nov 11 "Remembrance Day"(as the commonwealth nations do) as opposed to "Veteran's Day". Quiet reflection always felt, to me, far more appropriate than parades and flag waving.

Let's set aside the bickering and politicking for a moment and share stories of friends, family, and honoured ancestors now absent.

I know it's not Friday so my apologies to the Mods for the off topic post.

Comments

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I see 'veterans day' as a day to remember those who sacrificed and died for the U.S. Not really flag waving and parades, though I know that's common, but more of 'yeah things were horrible and you did these things for us anyways' sort of day.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Agreed. On my campus, the ROTC is holding a vigil outside Marsh Chapel. They're just out there, walking back and forth, and back and forth, and have been all day.

It's not a flag-waving day, at least not here.

[reflaxion.livejournal.com]

I just thought that's what Memorial Day was for.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Memorial Day is to remember the ones who died in war. Veterans Day is to remember the ones who survived.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

I miss my dog.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I had an uncle who served in the Battle of the Bulge in WWII, and I have a cousin who served in Desert Storm. To me the kind of dark irony about Armistice Day was that a good number of people sincerely believed the war of 1914 was the War to End All Wars. And then in 1937.....

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

My uncle thought he was too old to be drafted in 1942. He went anyway: north Africa, Italy, and then landed at Utah Beach on D-Day. He also was with the unit that liberated Dachau. The first night he was home, he told his family to ask him anything they wanted to know about the war; he told them all of his experiences - good and bad. Then he requested that they never ask him about the war again.

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

A bit shout out from over here to to all the allied servicemen and servicewomen who helped defeat the Axis 2-nil. All future generations owe you a debt we cannot pay.

One of my great grandfathers flew with the Luftwaffe, but always told me that while he was never ashamed of what he did as a soldier, he felt a remorse for the actions of his nation that was so terrible, it "very nearly broke him" and even when Germany was rebuilt, he could not bear to return.

He said that his pride in giving faithful service before and during the war, even if that faith was broken by his leaders, was the only thing that allowed him to go on as a man after the war. My recollection of him was as an insightful, caring and generous to his family and friends, who contributed to the community and was loved by all those around him.

I hope we can allow the same pride, dignity and respect to all those who serve and fight with honour, while never forgetting the responsibility, guilt and shame of those who send them faithlessly forth to kill and be killed, in the names of ideals that they only imagine and which war almost never realises.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

Thank you, too many times we forget that most of our enemies were real people just like us.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Too many times we allow that to obscure that those real people just like us sincerely and truly believed that mass murder on a scale unprecedented in scale and intent was not even a necessary evil but a positive good. It's fine to note that Joe Average Axis soldier/sailor was a human being. What is not fine is to use that to indicate that makes them any less mass murdering douchenozzles.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

Frankly I think you read way too much into my comment. And while I understand (as well as possible not knowing you personally, but based on scores of posts) why you might feel that way; not knowing my reasons for my comment, I think you should just have ignored it.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I think I may have read too much into it. I have, however, seen a long-term tendency to denying that the Wehrmacht killed people on par with the SS, which is very much the truth.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

It's cool.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That is an entirely incorrect assumption. After all Herr Hitler issued the Commissar Order which authorized the slaughtering of anyone deemed a "Commissar" which the soldiers took to mean Jews. The German army also has the death of 3 million Soviet POWs on its hand. The concentration camps were not the only form of mass slaughter and the soldiers killed equally just as many as the SS did.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Don't forget Dresden.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

In that case let's not forget the firebombings that leveled every city in Japan save two, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In that case also let's not forget Chunking, Warsaw, Rotterdam, London, and Hamburg.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Pssst. Ask for some sort of connection to Imperial Japan or something :P

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, it's just I see this argument and most of the time it tries to set a moral equivalence between the Allies and the Axis that never was. Even the vilest of the Big 3 Allies, the USSR, was a lot less nasty than Imperial Japan, let alone Nazi Germany.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

Moral equivalency was not the topic of this thread.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Chunking? Are you referring to Nanjing, Dec-Jan '37-'38?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, to the Japanese air attack on the city of Chungking in 1938-43. It was the first sustained terror bombing of the sort both the Axis and the Allies made WWII famous/infamous for.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Let's not. And while there was a lot of debate within the British upper military and Churchill about the role of bombing civilian targets, can we find any such debate within the higher levels of NAZI policy makers in regards to concentration camps, and mass exterminations of Eastern Europeans and Russians?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I personally think it's a constant reminder of just how easily any of us could be brainwashed.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

They weren't brainwashed. They were simply soldiers for a murderous ideology that lost so badly as to define epic fail. If they'd won the likes of Gillen would be explaining how the collapse of the murderous fascist regimes was due to Jew-loving masses or some stupid shit like that instead of trying to explain how Stalin was a jolly old fellow.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

My paternal grandfather was a Ukrainian partisan on the Eastern front and had to leave town in a hurry when the communists took over. He never talked about it, in fact if it weren't for my grandmother and some effects found after he passed I don't think anyone in the family would have known.

My Mom's dad was a destroyer officer in the US Navy doing convoy escort mission.

[caerfrli.livejournal.com]

My dad was a medic in the Pacific in WWII. He never liked to talk about it until a little bit the last 5 years or so. My spouse's uncle was gassed in WWI, perhaps by my great aunt's husband (long before they met) who was in the Kaiser's army.

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

My great-grandpa was the first-born in his family. He and his sister were born in Scotland, but his other five siblings were born in America. When the war broke out he wanted to go defend the ancestral homeland and joined the army. They sent him to the Pacific theatre instead, where he died defending a nest on the beach at Okinawa along with everyone else. His wife was young, with two little girls (one of whom became my grandma) and didn't take it well. My great-aunt (George's little sister) once told me about how at the wake she spent most of the time absently sweeping the porch and wouldn't respond to anyone, not even the girls. She couldn't take living in the same town as a widow and ran away--to Minnesota--where the girls grew up and had their own kids. My mother moved away with us when I was still very young.

The family was utterly torn asunder. And George was only one son.

[silver-chipmunk.livejournal.com]

My father was wounded in Italy in WW2 outside Salerno. He was the gunner in an armored car doing recon behind German lines. He somehow ended up being reported as dead in his hometown newspaper, although his parents knew he was only wounded, but people kept coming up to them and giving them condolences.

He was left disabled, with a partially paralyzed arm from nerve damage.

My uncle was, to his great disgust, given a medical deferment, so he went up to Canada and became an ambulance driver for the American Expeditionary Force. He also was in Italy.

Although he and my father were brothers-in-law not brothers, this mutual experience of Italy in World war 2 brought them together. They never talked about it though, at least not that I know of. They didn't need to, it was like they just knew. You could see them sitting together not talking about it, sometimes.

For all those who served.

[anadinboy.livejournal.com]

armistice day serves as a reminder what a crazy thing an 'armistice' is. WW1 should have carried on till germany was crushed and occupied for all time. As for dresden, that was just a bigger and better version of the nuremberg trials.

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

whoo boy.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That was not really within the power of any of the World War I armies.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

If it had been there might be as many Turks in Anatolia these days as there are Jews in Europe, as that was what the Treaty of Sevres wanted to accomplish....