Armistice Day

Long ago,
on the 11th hour
of the 11th day
of the 11th month,
“The War to End All Wars”
Was declared “Over.”

My Grandfather Ernst Mueller
Was freed from the Russian Prison Camp
Where he had been housed in a box car
As a Prisoner of War,
Somewhere in what is now Poland,
That day in 1918…

Long ago,
on the 11th hour
of the 11th day
of the 11th month
When “The War to End All Wars”
Was declared “Over.”

Happy to be free, I imagine
Happy the war was over, I imagine
- I’ve read some of the things he’d seen
Going home to the Black Forest
Bullet wound in his leg
Were strangers kind to him,
As he travelled homeward?
Were there tears in his eyes
As he passed wreckage and ruin
Going home to the Black Forest
Bullet wound in his leg
And all the images in his head…




“It is also celebrated as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day in other parts of the world, falling on November 11, the anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I. (Major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 with the German signing of the Armistice.”) - Wikipedia


Kurt Vonnegut was born on this day in 1922:
"I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.

So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.

What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

And all music is.
(Also from Wikipedia: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut)


Two German Soldiers’ Stories:
http://www.greatwardifferent.com/Great_War/1919/Retreat_01.htm