Occasional blogging, mostly of the long-form variety.

Friday, November 11, 2022

Armistice Day 11/11/22

(Click on the comic strip for a larger view.)

In 1959, Pogo creator Walt Kelly wrote:

The eleventh day of the eleventh month has always seemed to me to be special. Even if the reason for it fell apart as the years went on, it was a symbol of something close to the high part of the heart. Perhaps a life that stretches through two or three wars takes its first war rather seriously, but I still think we should have kept the name "Armistice Day." Its implications were a little more profound, a little more hopeful.

You said it, brother.

Thanks to all who have served or are serving, on this Veterans Day, or Remembrance Day, or Armistice Day.

This post is mostly a repeat I run every year, since I find it hard to top Kelly.

Back in 2009, I wrote a series of six related posts for Armistice Day (and as part of an ongoing series on war). The starred posts are the most important, but the list is:

"Élan in The Guns of August"

"Demonizing of the Enemy"

"The War Poetry of Wilfred Owen"

***"Giddy Minds and Foreign Quarrels"

"The Little Mother"

***"War and the Denial of Loss"

The most significant other entries in the series are:

"How to Hear a True War Story" (2007)

"Day of Shame" (2008)

"The Poetry of War" (2008)

"Armistice Day 2008" (featuring the war poetry of Siegfried Sassoon).

"They Could Not Look Me in the Eye Again" (2011)

"The Dogs of War" (2013)

"The Courage to Make Others Suffer" (2015)

"The Battle of the Somme" (2017)

"The Graveyard of Democracy" (2021)

I generally update these posts later with links to appropriate pieces for 11/11 by other folks as I find them. If you've written one, feel free to link it in a comment. Thanks.

2 comments:

Wesley Sandel said...

All I think about on this day is poor Gene Debs sitting in prison for making a speech

Annie said...

This is an extraordinary compilation that I’m just delving into for the first time. I began with one of your starred posts from 2009, encompassing Iraq. Reading it, I’m thinking about—and am haunted by—the battle-scarred veterans who participated in the Jan 6 Insurrection and are preparing for war here at home. The phrase “anger can be misdirected and exploited” leaped out at me. These are the war-lovers, possibly brain-injured, who figure prominently in the greatest threat to our national security now.