Veteran's Day

Today is Veteran's Day. Ever since I can remember, my sister and I would go outside with my dad and we would take a shot at 11:11. We started with shots of orange juice and then moved up to Fuzzy Navel and harder spirits. Today I had a shot for my dad, and also for my grandfathers and my dad's good friend Dave, who is a sweet teddy-bear of a man (he makes a mean fruit salad, and also does a killer Beverly Sills impression.) It's a strange "holiday" as such, one that doesn't get much play in this country, other than as a day off from school. Three years ago I was in England for Remembrance Day/Armistice Day, and it is a MUCH different affair there.

My parents and godmothers were visiting me, and we just happened to pick the Saturday before Remembrance Day as the day we'd go to Westminster Cathedral. We thought it was slightly odd that there were metal detectors up, and that everyone else was pretty elderly, but they let us through to the courtyard, where we saw this:

"Plots" for every branch of military service, nurses, drivers, etc. Everyone kept saying, "get to your plot" and of course we had no idea what was going on, having been let through in the first place only because we were wearing red poppies in our lapels, as was everyone else. (note: this starts in late October and runs 'til Remembrance Day. As my American Foreign Policy tutor, the legendary Andy Patmore, told me, "I wear the poppy for everyone who has died in war, not just the bloody British.) So we ended up hanging out with Ken the Veteran from Birmingham, and a passel of old women, who explained to us that this was the big Remembrance Day service, and that usually the Queen comes, but "her back was playing up" so it would be Prince Phillip this year. There was a procession from the church with trumpets and be-robed people, and at 11 they recited part of the For the Fallen poem by Laurence Binyon. Everyone (except the Wayward Americans) said the last part in unison,

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them."

It totally sent chills down my spine. Just to see all the people who were there, and eavesdrop on their stories, was amazing, and the fact that everything stops at 11--even traffic--while people observe a moment of silence. It's much more potent there for many reasons. When we returned to Norwich, there was a Remembrance Day parade and there was another service at the Norwich Cathedral, as you can see from these pictures:


Most of my meaningful military experiences seem to start in England, oddly enough, and here is what happened on the Thanksgiving that I was there. A friend and I had gone out for waffles and chocolate mousse to console ourselves for being so far away from our families, and afterwards she headed to the shops and I headed to the market (Norwich has a HUGE open air market). There were lots of people milling about, so I stayed to see what was happening. It was the returning home parade for the East Anglian Regiment from Afghanistan, so we were standing there, and they processed down the road with bagpipes and bands, and the guy behind me yelled, "there's my son!" and everyone around me cheered. You could tell the soldiers were supposed to be serious, but they kept sneakily smiling and were so happy to be home, safe. Even though I was 20 at the time, they looked even younger than me.

The old woman next to me (we had been chatting about how short we were before the parade started) turned to me at one point, and lightly touched my arm, saying, "ach, my dear, they are barely more than boys." I burst into tears. I was trying to be quiet about it, because the Brits are, by and large, not big on the emotional displays. It was a combination of things that set me off--the youth of the soldiers, the happiness of their relatives, the fact that it was Thanksgiving and I missed home, the fact that so many people, in so many countries were fighting each other and not returning home, and on and on. The old man in front of me turned around and said, "you should be able to see better, young lady. Come in front of me." I tried to protest, but he was having none of it. So I moved up, and he smiled at me. "It's all better now," he said. "They're alright now."

This post, it turns out, has nothing to do with Indiana. I spent today doing 3 loads of laundry, cleaning my apartment, and translating part of a simplified version of The Decameron. And as this post has instead turned into "Anna's Greatest Hits England Stories" and needs to be wrapped up, I will end with two recommendations:
1. if you are interested in the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, do check out Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War (2004) by Evan Wright. My cousin and I both read it after watching the miniseries (of the same name) on HBO. The miniseries is great too. Both are powerful, crazy, funny, moving, and horrifying.
2. As a creature of ritual, I have of late been listening to Masters of War by Bob Dylan and Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie on Veteran's Day. Both sum up a lot of what I feel about fighting in general.

And I'll close with a line from M*A*S*H: You've gotta understand. I'm not working on sick people here. I'm working on hurt young people, with essentially healthy bodies that have been insulted by ammunition. -- BJ