Veterans Day-2026

I like to remind people that around the World dozens of common wealth nations celebrate Remembrance or Armistice Day on this date. The 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month, of 2018 when the trenches and guns of WW1, the War touted to end all wars, fell silent. The men and women of arms from many of these nations are also my brothers and sisters. They have chewed the same dirt and bled on the same ground with and at times for us and that makes it so.

Sgt. Henry Nicholas Gunther was the last US Soldier to die in combat in that war at 10:59 am Local. It is reported that German Machine Gunners knowing the war was over tried valiantly to wave him off but he would not be deterred. Most have read Col John McCray’s, (Canadian Army Suregeon) Poem “In Flanders Field,” far fewer have read “We Shall Keep the Faith,” by Professor Moina Michaels of Georiga USA her 1918 answer to McCray, (https://blogs.loc.gov/…/2010/05/we-shall-keep-the-faith/)it is where the line “And now the Torch and Poppy Red

We wear in honor of our dead” comes from and the tradition it inspired.

We did not keep the faith and in retrospect it is and was a claim bound to fail. It is only through fear that the human species may experience peace. As Thomas Hobbes so elequently put it “Covenants without the sword, are but words.” So for all my brothers and sisters who have stood on a wall, projecting awe so that we may live in relative peace, thank you.

It has become tradition of mine and one that I honored today, to raise a glass in private or with other veterans of foreign wars at 11:11 local and take a moment to listen to Terry Kelly’s, “It a Pittance a Time” – he is correct our children have little fear in their eyes – it is good once a year to take just a moment to remember why. (link-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kX_3y3u5Uo)