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Veterans Day

Larrry

Well-known member
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Kato

Well-known member
Nice post. We should always be thankful for the sacrifices of our armed forces.

I'm curious about how Veterans Day is commemorated in the U.S.

In Canada, it's called Remembrance Day. The Legion sells small red poppy buttons that everyone buys and wears. It's considered a lapse if you don't have your poppy on during the week of Remembrance Day. The poppy is a symbol of the poppies that are made famous in the poem "In Flanders Fields", which was written during WWI, and is read at most ceremonies. Everything used to be closed all day, but in the past few years some businesses keep Sunday hours. No matter what their policy, almost everything is shut down in the morning.

Every town has a Remembrance Day ceremony at the local cenotaph (war memorial), and at exactly 11 am there is a minute of silence to acknowledge the sacrifices of armed forces from whatever war, from WWI to Afghanistan.

That's the way we do it here. How is it done in the U.S.?
 

Yanuck

Well-known member
The banks and post office are closed but other than that its business as usual for everything where we're at. We went to the girls school for their program, it was nice. I've never seen Poppies down here, which is strange for me as that is as you said Kato, a very strong symbol of Rembrance Day in Canada, plus the Flanders Field poem. I may be totally wrong, but I think to Americans, Memorial Day in May is a more recognized day for remembering veterans? perhaps someone who has been an American longer than me can yea or nay that? :)
When we showed at Farmfair in Edmonton, it always fell on this day, and at 11:00 A.M. the entire barn would come to a complete stop.

My GrandDad was in WW1, I'm quite biased but I think he was very handsome in his uniform! :)
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Richard Doolittle

Well-known member
Yanuck is pretty much right. Veteran's Day is a paid holiday for the lucky and business as usual for the majority. It's lost the significance for the great majority of our unappreciative society. Memorial Day is about the same, if not worse since it is always a three day weekend and it has become more of the symbolic start of summer.
 

Kato

Well-known member
Yanuck, I'm going to venture a guess that he was a cavalry officer? Did he make it home again? Several million didn't.

My Great Grandfather was at the Somme, and was given a compassionate leave because my Great Grandmother was pregnant, in the hospital, and ill with tuberculosis, and had five children that were taken into an orphanage. They only gave him the leave because of the insistence of the orphanage. He came home, and arrived just a week after she died. He missed her funeral. She had a baby four weeks before she died, and the baby was sent to a family a hundred miles away, where she also died at the age of 8 weeks. It took ninety years for us to find her, but we know where she is now. Great Grandfather caught the flu in 1918, and died after being sick for only three days. He was thirty three years old, and left five orphaned children, one of which was my Grandmother. His funeral was in the military cemetery, on Nov. 11, 1918, at exactly 11 a.m. Exactly the end of the war. I've always wondered if he knew the war ended.

For us, the Remembrance Day ceremonies are like having his funeral over again every year. It makes them even more special.
 

Yanuck

Well-known member
wow Kato thats a sad story :cry: My GrandDad was a Sgt. in the Royal Army Services Corp in the RTS div, he returned back to Canada on Dec.10, 1919
 
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