Posted by:
cludgie
(
)
Date: November 07, 2011 09:27AM
Remembrance Day, first of all, was changed in the US to "Veterans' Day," so there is no burden of remembering anything. And the remembrance is referring to WWI, a war in which Americans had no lasting or significant part. They entered so late that they didn't even serve a complete year in the war, as I remember, and their largest contribution was to bring along an influenza so bad that it killed far more than than they could have killed in battle. Veterans' Day has been reduced mostly to a federal holiday in which there is merely more barbecuing and shopping. Personally, in 21 years of military service I never saw a Veterans' Day remembrance service of the type that the Canadians and Brits have. Even Germans and Italians seem to have some sort of Remembrance Day observation.
Match this with my people's inability to remember anything. Americans just don't have a talent for remembering significant things, and I've never been sure why. There is a great tendency to use fluffy stories and object lessons rather than hard fact, and it's stuff like this that may have made Mormonism successful.
I've had two close encounters with real celebration of Remembrance Day. The first time I did a short holiday in the UK, it was over Remembrance Day. I was still LDS at the time, and was in church on 11/11/11. The bishop or branch prez stopped the meeting, and we all stood for a minute of silence. The second time was when I was serving in Germany, and on Veterans'/Remembrance Day went to the Canadian base in Lahr to shop. Unfortunately, the base facilities were closed due to Remembrance Day, and the Canadians Forces were in the middle of a rather large tattoo for the occasion, which culminated in the band stacking their drums in a sort of pile, something I was very unfamiliar with. In both cases everyone was wearing poppies. The American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign War also sell poppies in front of the commissaries and exchanges on US military bases, but they are crappy and usually purple, and the guys are very unconvincing and tacky and hard-sell when they sell them. I'm always afraid that the money is just going toward stocking the beer at the AL and VFW halls.
Anyway, point is, many Americans for the life of them can't remember or separate in their minds which war is WWI and which is WWII. Many merely remember that the First War is the one that Snoopy was in, flying his dog house against the Red Baron, and the Second World War was the one that we won with nobody's help. That's the cruel truth.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/07/2011 09:30AM by cludgie.