November 11, 1918, SJ Dodgson MJoTA 2013 v7n2 p1111
What you call November 11 depends on where you live and when you live.
In the United Kingdom it was Armistice Day, now Remembrance Day. In the United States it is Veterans Day. I attended Remembrance Day ceremonies in Antigua in 2011, and in Australia in 2012.
On November 10, 2013, I attended a hasty Veterans Day ceremony that took less than 45 minutes in an island in the middle of Cooper River in the United States, in Camden County New Jersey. No war memorial in sight, and certainly no wreaths, although Taps was played. This was in contrast with the lavish wreath-laying and parade in Manhattan I witnessed in 2009; it takes place every year. Wreaths were also laid on November 11 on war memorial throughout Washington DC, these ceremonies were sequential so that mourners, and we are all mourners, could be at the World War II memorial and round reflecting pool, at the Vietnam Memorial, and at Arlington National Cemetery.
During the Camden County ceremony, we were told that Veterans Day is for Veterans, and Memorial Day, the last Monday of May and the official start of summer, is for remembering the dead.
On November 11, 2013 I walked through the memorials to the world wars, the Holocaust, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, terrorist attacks along Copper River, with statements carved in stone like "we will never forget", and saw a single wreath. From the Philippine Chamber of Commerce. At the memorial for the thousands of Americans and Filipinos dead during the Bataan death march in 1942. The Philippines has just been devastated by a typhoon, they have plenty on their minds at the moment, and yet they stopped to remember.
How can we come together as a nation to work for peace when we cannot even agree on when, and if, we should mourn our dead?
