I have mixed feelings about Kurt Vonnegut's work, mostly because I have not read enough to really form my own opinion. But read what he wrote about Veterans' Day in "Breakfast of Champions" --
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 stopped 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.
Our nation is sadly lacking in sacred things.
And "WWII vet returns to the town he fought in to find that he's become a local legend" --
Thanks to all who have served. Be patient with the rest of us who know very little of how you have sacrificed for us, especially those who don't believe it was right for you to do so.
Last edited by Ernie Gilman on November 14, 2014 03:27.
A good answer is easier with a clear question giving the make and model of everything. "The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." -- G. “Bernie” Shaw
