November 11th, 2026
Today is Veterans Day, and I am a vet. So, is my oldest son. I always struggle a bit with this day. I sent my son a text this morning, “I hope you have a good Veterans Day.” I don’t what else to say to him. It’s not a festive day. It’s a day of remembrance, and some of things about being a vet are painful to recall.
I took my grandson, Asher, to kindergarten this morning. He goes to the Tamarack Waldorf School in Milwaukee. Waldorf is an alternative educational system that tends to attract an eclectic population. The school has a serious hippie vibe to it. As I stood with Asher waiting for class to start, it occurred to me that I was probably the only veteran in the entire school community.
I mentioned this to the assistant teacher in Asher’s class. She told me that her husband is a vet. He went to Iraq like my son did, and he came out of it with PTSD just like my son did. Asher’s teacher doesn’t know what to say to her spouse on Veterans Day. She doesn’t want to tell him, “Thank you for your service.” A lot of vets don’t really like to hear that. I don’t and neither does my son. She finally told me that on Veterans Day she prays for all those soldiers who came home damaged. There are plenty of folks for whom she can pray.
Part of my problem with Veterans Day is that there is a certain moral ambiguity that goes along with being a vet. I remember back when I was a plebe at West Point, fifty years ago, I was told that by definition a military officer was “an expert in the management of violence”. That means my job was to hurt people. I wrestled with that idea for a decade before I finally got out of the Army. After I got out, I was active in the peace movement. Most people in the group welcomed my participation, but not all of them. A few people were not at all impressed that I was a veteran. One of them told me flat out,
“You are an accomplice to murder.”
Okay then. In a way that’s true. I never killed anybody, but I was there to help with task. I have also been told that every American who pays taxes that fund the U.S. military is responsible for our nation’s wars. As citizens we are participants in the current war against Iran, willingly or not.
I mentioned to Asher’s teacher that Veterans Day was originally called “Armistice Day”. It is on November 11th because that is the day that the First World War ended. The day was set aside by Allied countries to remember those soldiers who fought in the Great War, and it was also a day to resolve never to fight such a war again. The day was as much about the return of peace as it was about all the people who died in a cataclysmic war.
The First World War was horrific in a truly senseless way. WWII gets more publicity than WWI, but that’s because the Second World War seems more heroic. WWI was just mindless carnage. Read any book about the war (e.g. All Quiet of the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, or 1914 by Solzhenitsyn, or The Good Soldier Schweik by Jaroslav Hasek), and you will see how hideous and insane that war was. It destroyed most of Europe and set the stage for the Holocaust and Hiroshima. Those who survived WWI never wanted to fight like that again.
Of course, in the they did. And, of course, we still do.
On Armistice Day people made an effort to work for peace in addition to remembering sacrifices of soldiers. On Veterans Day the focus has shifted. We honor those who served in the military, but it seems that we no longer strive for peace.
I prefer Armistice Day.
