It’s Veteran’s Day, and I’ve got a great many things to do on this day off, blogging not one of them. (And I like the use of the possessive to describe the day - and yeah, I know it’s not the official way.)
In regards to the holiday itself: I am not a veteran of the armed services. Few in my family are. But in my capacity as a teacher, I’ve known veterans of every conflict since World War Two. In many of my evening courses, it’s not uncommon to have older students taking classes “for pleasure’. Though I haven’t had a WWII vet in class in a decade or more, I had several take my course in my first few years at Pasadena City College. My mother, who taught for nearly thirty years at Monterey Peninsula College, recalls having had a few older students who were First World War veterans when she was first teaching. Today, I have at least a dozen young people who served in Iraq or Afghanistan enrolled. My veterans tend to be excellent students, with the work habits one might expect to see.
I teach the build-up to World War One in my modern European history course; indeed, the Great War remains the topic that generates the most interest among students in that class. Though their numbers have dwindled to a precious few — so few that I can name most of them — I am struck that on this 90th anniversary of Armistice Day, a handful of Great War veterans are still alive. Frank Buckles is the last surviving US combat veteran; he is 107. Harry Patch and Henry Allingham (110 and 112 respectively) are the last two British combat veterans; Patch, along with Fernand Goux of France, are the last living persons to have fought in the trenches. I am awed by their longevity, and by the hand of fate that took so many millions of young men - and chose a select few of their comrades to live in three separate centuries.
May this Armistice Day not be their last.
Poet Laureate Andrew Motion’s Five Acts of Harry Patch is very fine. My favorite bit:
…life is like that now, suddenly and gradually
everyone you know dies and still comes to visit
or you head back to them, it’s not clear which…
Recent Comments