Armistice Day

If I've not made my position clear by this late date, then I never will. I trust you, gentle reader, will not misunderstand me.

"Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not."
—Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Breakfast of Champions

Ninety-five years have passed since the guns fell silent at "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month," the symbolic end of what was up to that point the bloodiest slaughter in the history of Christendom. We forget the events of 1914-1918—nothing less than the attempted suicide of Western civilization—& the years that lead to them, at our gravest peril. The Commonwealth has learnt this lesson better than we, their Remembrance Day combining the spirit of the universal Armistice Day & our Memorial Day in a way that our Veterans' Day does not. My purpose is not to denigrate us, but to point out an example by which we might profit: Remembrance Day. A picture of worth a thousand words: photographs of Remembrance Day.

This blog's annual showcase of the poetry of the Great War began with "In Flanders Fields," & for a time it was thought this would poem would be a annual fixture. Then I decided to branch out into other poets & other poems by the same poet; I cherish that decision, but even so the time has come for the return of "In Flanders Fields." The field of The Secret Base has lain fallow since '08, time enough for McCrae's words to affect as anew.

"In Flanders Fields"
by John McCrae (1872-1918)*

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row by row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still singing bravely, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who died
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.



"The Parable of the Old Man and the Young"
by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)*

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
As they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.



Wayback Machine: Lest We Forget
We here at The Secret Base have not always honored Armistice Day as we should, not always treated it as sacred, but since the very year of this blog's establishment, Anno Domini 2002, not once have we failed to mark the day in some slight manner. Lest we forget.

Armistice Day '12

Armistice Day '11 | Armistice Day '10

Armistice Day '09 | Armistice Day '08

Armistice Day '07 | Armistice Day '06

Armistice Day '05 | Armistice Day '04

Armistice Day '03 | Armistice Day '02

The Rebel Black Dot Song of Armistice Day
Dropkick Murphys, "The Green Fields of France (No Man's Land)" from The Warrior's Code (T.L.A.M.)

*Neither Lieutenant Colonel McCrae nor 2nd Lieutenant Owen, M.C., survived the final year of the Great War. Doctor McCrae died of the pneumonia; Mister Owen died in combat, one week before the Armistice.