All Who Served: How Armistice Day Became Veterans Day

Six More Hours

By that fall, the First World War had been grinding on for more than four years. The United States had come in late, in April 1917. But by the fall of 1918, more than a million American soldiers were fighting in France.

Germany was running out of men, out of food, and out of time. So at about five o'clock that morning, in a railway car parked in a forest near Compiègne, in northern France, German delegates signed an armistice with the Allies. An armistice isn't a peace treaty. It's an agreement to stop shooting.

But the terms said the shooting would stop at eleven o'clock. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Therefore, for six more hours, the war went on. Our captain from Missouri fired one hundred sixty-four rounds that morning, by his own count.

In a French village, a private from Baltimore named Henry Gunther charged a German roadblock. A machine gun cut him down at two minutes before eleven. He's remembered as the last American killed in the war.

I served in the Navy, and here's the part that gets me. Everyone on that front knew the hour. But a war isn't over until the clock says it is.

Then the hour came, and the guns went quiet.

More than one hundred sixteen thousand Americans had died in that war, from combat, from wounds, and from disease.

But how do you remember a war that big? Somebody had to decide.

A Pause at Eleven

One year later, President Woodrow Wilson was recovering from a stroke. From his sickbed, he sent the country a message for the first anniversary, November 11th, 1919.

"To us in America," he wrote, "the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service and with gratitude for the victory."

He asked for parades, public meetings, and a brief pause in business at eleven o'clock in the morning. That pause stuck.

Two years later, on November 11th, 1921, an unknown American soldier from the battlefields of France was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. One man, standing in for every soldier who never came home. President Warren Harding presided, and Congress made that one day a legal holiday.

States began making it a holiday of their own. Then, on May 13th, 1938, Congress made November 11th a legal federal holiday, "a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace."

The Great War, people said, had been the war to end all wars.

But within a year and a half, Europe was at war again.

A Sailor from Birmingham

The Second World War put more than sixteen million Americans in uniform. Then came Korea. A holiday named for the end of the First World War didn't seem to cover everyone it needed to.

In Birmingham, Alabama, one man decided to fix that. His name was Raymond Weeks. He'd enlisted in the Navy in 1942. When he came home, he believed November 11th should honor veterans of every war, not just the ones from 1918.

As a Navy veteran, I'll admit I like that this started with a sailor.

Weeks didn't stop at believing it. On November 11th, 1946, he and a small team from Alabama took the idea to the Pentagon, to General Dwight Eisenhower, the Army's Chief of Staff. Eisenhower backed it. He arranged for General Omar Bradley to speak at the first banquet. And he sent Weeks a telegram, saying he hoped what Alabama was doing would spread across the nation.

So on November 11th, 1947, Birmingham held what's considered the first National Veterans Day celebration, with a parade and ceremonies for veterans of all wars. Weeks ran it every year for the rest of his life.

In November of 1982, President Ronald Reagan presented him with the Presidential Citizens Medal at the White House. The White House briefing paper called him the Father of Veterans Day. Reagan called him the driving force.

But back in 1946, all Raymond Weeks had was one city and a telegram. Washington would take eight years to catch up.

One Word

In 1954, a congressman from Emporia, Kansas, named Edward Rees introduced a bill to change one word in the 1938 law. Strike out Armistice. Write in Veterans.

Now, ask in Kansas, and you'll hear this story told differently. The Kansas Historical Society says Rees's bill grew out of an idea from a man back home in Emporia. Birmingham or Emporia, both towns wanted the same thing.

Congress passed the bill. On June 1st, 1954, President Eisenhower signed it, the same man who'd heard Raymond Weeks out at the Pentagon. That October, he issued the first Veterans Day proclamation. A day named for the end of one war now belonged to everyone who served.

But in 1968, Congress decided Americans needed more three-day weekends.

The Uniform Monday Holiday Act moved several holidays to Mondays, and Veterans Day went with them, to a Monday in late October. In 1971, the first one fell on October 25th.

A lot of people hated it. Veterans groups said the date mattered. November 11th was the moment the guns went quiet. Two states refused to switch from the start. By 1975, forty-six of the fifty states were ignoring the October date.

Therefore, in September 1975, President Gerald Ford signed a law putting Veterans Day back on November 11th, whatever day of the week it falls on. The change took effect in 1978.

Every year at Arlington, at eleven o'clock in the morning, a wreath is laid at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where that first unknown American was buried in 1921.

So who, exactly, is this day for? Every year, a lot of people get that part wrong.

Not Memorial Day

Veterans Day is not Memorial Day.

Memorial Day, in May, is for the ones who died in service. It grew out of Decoration Day after the Civil War, when Americans laid flowers on the graves of the war dead.

Veterans Day is for everyone who served. Living or gone. Wartime or peacetime. Combat or support. Four years or forty.

Today, the largest group of living veterans served in the Gulf War era, from 1990 on. Then come the Vietnam era veterans. The World War Two generation, Raymond Weeks's generation, is down to fewer than one hundred twenty thousand.

Some stormed beaches. Some fixed engines. Some stood watch on a ship in the middle of the night, a long way from home. Most came home, went to work, raised families, and never asked for a thing.

Our sponsor, Parcaut Supply Co., released a shirt today called All Who Served. It is built around that same idea, honoring every person who wore the uniform. The link is in the description.

Which brings us back to that captain in France, his letter, and the guns across the road.

Yours Always

It's a little before eleven. The heavy battery behind him is still firing. Then he writes this.

"Every time one of the guns goes off it shakes my house like an earthquake. I just got official notice that hostilities would cease at eleven o'clock."

He tells her everyone is about to have a fit. He signs it, "Yours always, Harry."

His name was Harry Truman. In 1945, that captain of artillery became the thirty-third President of the United States.

But in 1918, he was one of millions. He went over, did his job, and came home a veteran. Most of the others never became anybody famous. That's the whole point of the day.

As a Navy veteran, I'll just say this. Most of us didn't do anything heroic. We showed up, did our jobs, and stood our watch. Veterans Day says that counts.

So this November 11th, at eleven in the morning, take a moment, the way Americans did back in 1919. And if you know a veteran, thank them. Plain and simple.

Somewhere in France, the big guns across the road go quiet, and the house stops shaking.

Tomorrow: one small American gunboat, a few hundred Colombian soldiers, and a railroad. What does it take to make a new country in a single day? The Daily Muster is supported by Parcaut Supply Co. If this one meant something to you, subscribe and pass it to a veteran you know. Muster's done. Fair winds. I'm Ed Parcaut, and I'll see you tomorrow.