The 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month

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Human Events:

The 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month

 

 

 

By: Robert J. Laplander

11/10/2012 05:10 AM

 

 

On the evening of November 10^th, 1918, General John J. Pershing – overall commander of the American Expeditionary Force in France – issued out his orders for the next day. They were for continued and unrelenting attack throughout the American sector of the line. Though the announcement had already been made to all units that a Cease Fire was to take effect at 11:00 am that following day, few had faith in its realities; General Pershing included. History tells us, however, that on that momentous day – at the 11^th hour, of the 11^th day, of the 11^th month – the guns did indeed fall silent for the first time in four years and four months. With that general armistice of hostilities, the First World War effectively drew to a conclusion. It had cost some 13 million lives, the greatest tragedy the world had yet seen, and it made a permanent mark on the generation that had experienced it.

In 1938, Armistice Day, as it was then called, became an official U.S. National holiday. However, the 11^th of November had been traditionally honored the world over ever since the first anniversary of peace following the war in 1919, and recognized by our Federal Government as early as 1925. It was the fashion in those days that at 11:00 am, no matter where you were, everything would cease at that hour for one fill minute of silence,

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November 9, 2012, 7:39 p.m. ET

 

A Cold Shoulder for Cold-War Vets

 

For survivors of the anticommunist effort, little remembrance on Veterans Day

 

This weekend, Americans will honor soldiers who fought the country's wars, from the Somme to Kandahar. In Manassas, Va., 30 miles from the nation's capital, a parade on Saturday will honor veterans of another big war: the one that never happened.

 

The Cold War, from 1945 to the Soviet Union's breakup in 1991, was all about avoiding total nuclear war. It turned hot in Korea and Vietnam and sparked conflicts from Lebanon to Grenada. But soldiers on duty between flare-ups didn't do battle. When the war that wasn't came to an end, they got no monuments, no victory medals.

 

Nor can they join the American Legion—which makes the parade of Cold War vets in Manassas a minor hot spot of its own.[/color]

 

The idea came out of Legion Post 10, a brick building with a long bar on Cockrell Road. The parade committee was in a room behind the bar one evening, talking protocol and Porta-Johns. Most were career retirees, yet 50 years after the Cuban missile crisis, the Legion's exclusion of Cold War short-timers was on their minds.http://online.wsj.co...2647950486.html