In Keeping With Veterans/Armistice Day Tomorrow

[ER]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7696021.stm

An article about those who were the last to make the supreme sacrifice on the final day of the Great War.

in pace requiescat

[raj]

Very sad.  No good reason to have been fighting on that day.  My great uncle was killed Oct. 3, 1918, and I always thought that that was a shame, couldn't have made 5 more weeks.  And this was after having lost part of a lung a couple years prior in a gas attack.  Really he should have been out of action.

So thank you to all the veterans. 

[indianasmith]

Can you believe there is still one living U.S. veteran from World War One?  His name is Fred Buckles, and he is 107 years old!!!!

In the 1990's I got to interview 8 surviving veterans of the Great War.  It was one of the coolest things I have ever done.  One of them had been in Pershing's army down on the border in 1917, chasing Pancho Villa!

[ER]

What sorts of things did the veterans tell you, indy?

[indianasmith]

Too many great stories for me to type up this late at night . . .

three of them had fathers who served in the Civil War . . .

one had a father who was born a slave.

I'll post more another time.  Those interviews were one of  the high points of my life as a historian.

[Trevor]

11 November is also another remembrance day for me personally ~ this is the day in 1965 that the then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) declared independence from Britain and plunged itself into a terrifying 15 year civil war.

It's sad when you go back in African history and see that a lot of nations have been fighting over that piece of land since before recorded history and the beautiful country of my birth has never known peace at all, ever. 

They are still fighting over it ~ what is left to fight over?