On this day, November 11, 11:11 A.M., 1918

[Captain Miller]

Let us celebrate Veterans day today!! But more importantly, we should remember the men who fought in the trenches and in the air during the First World War. Originally called Armistice day, Veterans day was originally made to honor the end of the 1st World War on Nov. 11, 11:11 A.M. 1918. Later, Congress mandated that the day should honor all veterans of all Wars. God bless the souls of our Doughboys and Marines, and the men fighting overseas as we speak.

[J3D1]

God bless them all!

[da Bronx Commando]

Amen to that.

[Steve O.]

"In Flander's Fields"
By John McCrae

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.

[Captain Miller]

This is a poem written by My Great Grandfather
By: Sgt. Leo T. Brinson, 119th Infantry 30th Division

A SOLDIER FOR HIS MATE

There’s a broken, battered village
Somewhere up behind the line;
There’s a dugout and a bunk there
That I used to say were mine.

I remember how I reached them.
Dripping wet and all forlorn,
In the dim and dreary twilight
Of a weeping summer dawn.

All that week I’d buried brothers
In one bitter battle slain;
In one grave I laid two hundred,
God, what sorrow and what pain!

And that night I’d been in trenches,
Seeking out the sodden dead,
And just dropping them in shell holes,
With a service swiftly said.

For the bullets rattled ‘round me,
But I couldn’t leave them there,
Water-soaked in flooded shell holes.
Rift of common Christian prayer.

So I crawled ‘round on my knees,
And I listened to the roar
Of the guns that hammered Ypres,
Like big breakers on the shore.

Then there spoke a dripping sergeant,
When the time was growing late:
“Would you please to bury this one,
Cause he used to be my mate?”

So we groped our way in darkness
To a body lying there,
Just a blacker lump of blackness,
With a red blotch on his hair.

Though we turned him gently over,
Yet I still can hear the thud,
As the body fell face forward
And then settled in the mud.

We went down upon our faces,
And I said the service through,
From “I am the Resurrection”
To the last, the great “Adieu.”

We stood up to give the blessings
And commend him to the Lord,
When a sudden light shot soaring,
Silver swift and like a sword.

At a stroke it slew the darkness,
Flashed its glory on the mud,
And I saw the sergeant staring
At a crimson clot of blood.

There are many kinds of sorrow
In this world of Love and Hate,
But there is no sterner sorrow
Than a soldier’s for his mate.