Some Reflections On Veteran's Day 2022

 

     Today is a holiday in the US. It is Veteran's Day. This holiday honors all veterans with a special focus on the end of World War I that took place on the 11th of November 1918 at 11:00 AM Greenwich Mean Time.

    The end of the war was arranged well in advance of this date. The insanity was that troops were required to fight until 11:00 AM. Today in the US military, if a man or woman in a war zone refuses to fight, he or she will be arrested and taken to a court martial. They will be sentenced to some relatively short period of confinement. They will get a Bad Conduct or Dishonorable Discharge. 103 years ago, it was the death penalty for any soldier who refused to fight. Senior non-commissioned officers and officers had the authority to shoot any uncooperative soldier dead right on the spot. In the alternative, such a soldier could be arrested, court-martialed, and shot in front of a firing squad. Over three hundred British soldiers were shot in front of firing squads in World War I for dissertation or refusing to fight. In World War II, my father was a sergeant E-6 in the US Army. He carried a .45 automatic pistol. He had the legal right to shoot any subordinate dead who deserted or showed cowardice in the face of the enemy. In all of World War II, only one US soldier was executed for desertion- Private Eddie Slovak.

     The soldiers and sailors alive and on active duty on the morning of 11-11-1918 must have considered it insanity to fight until 11:00 AM. If an order was given to attack, they knew that if they failed to obey the order, they faced the death penalty. One US Army officer launched a major attack that morning. German soldiers facing the attack considered such an attack an act of madness. There were numerous other cases like this. The last allied soldier to die was a 40-year-old British coal miner.

      If I had been alive then and in the combat zone, I would have been a sergeant and a squad leader. I would have told my men to look busy, make a lot of noise, and fire their weapons in the air. I would have made a feeble effort to attack the Germans. My men and I would have been alive at 11:01 AM that morning.