CRZ
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| #1 Posted on 11.11.03 1529.05 Reposted on: 11.11.10 1530.50 | http://va.gov/vetsday/
Today is the 50th Veterans Day! It's also the 85th anniversay of the WWI Armistice, and the last day of the observance of the 50th Anniversay of the Korean War (korea50.army.mil).
In Canada, today is Remembrance Day as well as the last day of Remembrance Week. http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm?source=feature/week2003
In the UK, the 11th was also Remembrance Day. http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/
Wearing a red poppy to honour the war dead is a tradition in all three countries, I believe. As empty symbolism goes, it's kinda nice. ;-) Promote this thread! | | odessasteps
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| #2 Posted on 11.11.03 1656.22 Reposted on: 11.11.10 1657.00 | In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved, and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
| Bishoplaud
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| #3 Posted on 13.11.03 0806.15 Reposted on: 13.11.10 0807.22 | Not to unduly drag this back to the top, but I just wanted to thank CRZ and Odessasteps for two quality posts. By the way, if anyone could tell me who wrote "In Flanders Field", I'd be grateful. It's slipped my mind and driving me mad! | cfgb
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| #4 Posted on 13.11.03 0834.24 Reposted on: 13.11.10 0840.47 | John McCrae, a Canadian, wrote In Flanders Fields.
He was a World War I veteran and died of pneumonia back in 1918. The poem was written during the war. | Jaguar
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| #5 Posted on 13.11.03 0836.22 Reposted on: 13.11.10 0843.21 | Eh. Not that I've ever really done anything to show I cared about Veterans' Day, but this made me care less.
"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 stoppped 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."
-Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Breakfast of Champions
(edited by Jaguar on 13.11.03 0936) | ALL ORIGINAL POSTS IN THIS THREAD ARE NOW AVAILABLE |
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