In 2022, we honor our veterans for their service and sacrifice.
On Veteran’s Day, there is something else we should be commemorating, but regrettably do not. It’s the destruction of the Ottoman Empire (Islamic Caliphate) where allied troops killed approximately 2.5 million Muslims who had invaded our lands.
BLR says
to me it was that promise by bond that was made and as I continue on it remains intact by memory and by me bound on too keep , he lies at rest returned from Vietnam 65 age 19 , his promise was well kept to all the rest of us that day
FaithfulServantsOfChristKJV says
The tragic thing about WW1 is that it was called “the war to end all wars” but it ended nothing of the kind.
Harry Patch (1898 – 2009) was a veteran of WW1, and he made a good point on war:
“I felt then, as I feel now, that the politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organizing nothing better than legalized mass murder.”
(“Land of conflict” by Ian Pindar, Aimee Shalan, John Dugdale, The Guardian, June 13, 2008.)
Leonard Gearhardt says
I didn’t know about Harry Patch. Wow he saw so many things a people in his life. Thank you.
FaithfulServantsOfChristKJV says
My great-grandfather was a veteran of WW1 (my great-great grandfather was a veteran of the second Boer war, which was fought between 1899 and 1902), and my grandfather was a veteran of WW2.
I never met my great-great grandfather or my great-grandfather, but my grandfather was still alive when I was born, he would sometimes act as my babysitter when my parents went out.
At the time, 10-year-old me didn’t fully grasp or realize the significance of the fact that he was a living link to one of the worst wars that plagued Europe, he wasn’t a history professor who researched the war, he was somebody who saw it as it occurred and witnessed it himself.
I remember seeing a video in which a 95-year-old WW2 veteran recalled when he met a veteran of the civil war (he was only young boy, and the civil war veteran was in his 90s, it goes to show how WW2 veterans are truly a sort of living portal to the past, since when my grandfather was a young boy, there were still veterans from the civil war still alive).
Leonard Gearhardt says
Yes. I remember that sense of continuity with the past when my grandfather told me some stories about his family. Last week I read an article with portraits taken circa 1868 of men who had been in the Revolutionary War. Gave me shivers.
FaithfulServantsOfChristKJV says
Yeah, it’s cool to think about the chain of succession.
When we are elderly ourselves, we could tell our experiences of when we met an elderly veteran from WW2 or WW1 when we were just young kids.
And that elderly veteran of WW2 or WW1 could have an experience of when he was a young boy meeting an elderly veteran of the civil war.
And likewise that elderly veteran of the civil war could have had a story of when he was a young boy meeting an elderly veteran of the war of 1812 or the American revolutionary war.
There were still some Revolutionary war veterans that were still alive as far as the late-1860s and early 1870s, so considering that civil war veterans were usually born in the 1830s or 1840s some of them could have had a grandfather or great-grandfather who fought in the revolutionary war or knew somebody (like an elderly neighbors or family friend who was a veteran).
It’s cool to think about and really grasp the fact that when you are talking to a WW2 vet (or anybody of a similar age) you are essentially talking to a living link to a distant past and somebody who has seen a lot seen the world change a lot in their 9-10 decades of being on earth.
FaithfulServantsOfChristKJV says
I remember seeing a BBC documentary about the last surviving WW1 veterans in the UK (it was filmed between 2003 and 2009), when they began filming in 2003 there were only 27 WW1 veterans in the UK still alive (all of them were over 100-years old, the youngest being 102 and the oldest being close to 110), and by the time filming wrapped up in 2009 only 4 veterans were still alive, and only 2 of them were even well enough to be interviewed (the other two had failing/declining health and couldn’t give interviews).
The film pointed out that these 27 veterans were the UK’s last links to WW1, but not just that, they were also among the UK’s last living links to the Victorian era (since they were born when Queen Victoria was still alive and on the throne).
One of the veterans interviewed was born in 1898, and he remembers seeing British soldiers return from the second Boer war (fought between 1899 – 1902), he was only 3-years-old at the time.
Another one of the veterans interviewed was born in 1896, and he remembers being carried on the shoulder of one of the returning soldiers from the Boer war (he was only 6-years-old at the time), the cool thing is that 12-years-later (in 1914), that WW1 veteran would end up in a battalion and his platoon sergeant turned out to be that same soldier who carried him in his shoulders when he was only 6.
Az gal says
Muslums are not strong or smart. They are barbaric, that’s all. Savages.
Stewart - South Africa says
Mongoloid f***er without a clue!
Dan says
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.
Lest we forget.
Calita says
Beautiful!
Leonard Gearhardt says
YES.