And 11-11

 I still think of the time, maybe close to 20 years ago now, when I walked in to my early Biostats class to an argument between the students, as to whether today was Veteran's Day or Memorial Day.

I do not have  a military background, no one in my immediate family does, but I knew. I said "The eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, does that ring any bells?" 

 

It did not

So I took a few moments and explained Armistice Day to them. It's more than 100 years ago now, and I don't think WWI mattered as much to the US anyway - We entered very late, mainly to support allies, and it's hard to explain WWI as compared to, for example, WWII, which could more clearly be "we're fighting evil"

I had a great-uncle (who I never met; I think he died when my mom was still a teen) who was in the infantry in the Trenches in France; he was gassed (which is probably why a pneumonia took him earlier than he might have been). He did come back here and apparently worked some years as a butcher.

On the other side - well, I learned in the past decade or so about my grandfather being an experimental pilot in the very early Army Air Corps (he entered in 1917. I think he did not want to be drafted into the infantry or other ground units; supposedly he tried to claim his mother's widowhood as an exemption). 

He did his training not far from what is now Love Field. Saw a close buddy of his die horrifically in a crash. I mean, like - my grandfather was on the ground and he witnessed the crash. That would change a person, and in his memoirs, he stated that his periodic bouts of "melancholy" were probably caused by this (but I think: there is a depressive thread in the personality make up in that part of the family; I see it in myself. And also, he had "Spanish Flu" twice, being hospitalized for it once, and I KNOW serious viral illnesses can have mental effects).

The other story I remember him writing about in his memoirs (I was too young, I think, to hear his stories while he as alive) was his arrival in NYC. It's a good story, almost TOO good, and as much as  I want it to be true, I also know that my grandpa had that Irish strain in his personality that just loved  a good story, and it's *possible* he embroidered it a bit.

But. The story as it goes is: in early November 1918 he was told his training was done, and he and the other men with him were to board a train to New York, where they'd get orders and board a troop ship bound for France. 

The date is important. He wrote about arriving in early in the morning on the 12th and waking to the sound of partying.

November 12, 1918. He missed the war by one day. He was spared from having to go and risk his life further. And yes, it's likely he would have died; as I said he saw people die in training exercises. (And I wonder, with a shudder - had he been killed, would I have been here at all? In a different form? Just like I wonder about his early ambition to be a (Catholic) priest)

Fortunately he did not die, and he met my grandmother, and they had my dad, who later had me.

 

But lately,when I read or hear "An Irish Airman Foresees his Death" (written in 1918 by Yeats) I wonder if my grandfather (who liked poetry and was proud of his Irish heritage) read it, and if so, what he thought of it.

 SO much good poetry came out of the War. And much of it deeply anti-war (this one, not so much, it's more just sort of.....nihilistic)

And yes, I think even as we should remember the veterans, and a lot of lip service is paid to their service and sacrifice, we should remember what a terrible, terrible thing war is, and all the lives it destroys (not just the soldiers killed, but the ones who survive and have to live with what they experienced, and the civilians in the war zones...) and it should not be lightly entered in to.