"The Truth About Veteran's Day..."

How Veterans Day Went From Celebrating World Peace To Thanking Armed Forces

The Washington Post
Katie Mettler
November 11, 2017

T.C Ayers, a Vietnam veteran from Larchmont, N.Y., spends some time alone near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

On Nov. 11, we celebrate Veterans Day with parades and Old Glory T-shirts, with salutes to those who served and prayers for those who fell.

But the version of Veterans Day we know now wasn’t always so. It wasn’t always a holiday, it wasn’t always on Nov. 11 and, at first, it wasn’t even called Veterans Day. The original intent, established in the wake of World War I, was to celebrate world peace. Then the wars never ended, so Veterans Day changed.

Let’s start from the beginning.

Nov. 11, 1918

At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, fighting between the Allied Forces and Germany stopped, putting an end to the bloodshed of World War I per the terms of an armistice agreement signed in France that same day.

But World War I — the “War to end all wars” — did not officially end until seven months later.

A veteran at Arlington Cemetery’s Veterans Day ceremonies on Oct. 27, 1975. 

(James K.W. Atherton/The Washington Post)

Nov. 11, 1919

On the one-year anniversary of the armistice agreement, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation commemorating Nov. 11 as Armistice Day. The celebrations were to include parades, public meetings and a two-minute suspension of business at 11 a.m.

The proclamation read: “… 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, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations …”

A watch soldier places a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in 1977. (Frank Johnston/The Washington Post)

June 4, 1926

Congress passed a resolution urging state governors to observe Armistice Day with “thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through goodwill and mutual understanding between nations.”

At the time, 27 states had already made Nov. 11 a legal holiday.

Spec. Austin Allen, who served in Iraq with the 4th Infantry Division, gets a loving look from his wife, Carolyn, during a Veterans Day observance in Washington. (Carol Guzy / The Washington Post)

May 13, 1938

More than a decade later, Congress made Armistice Day an official holiday dedicated to world peace.

June 1, 1954

World War I was not the war to ends all wars, and lawmakers believed that veterans from World War II and the Korean War also deserved their own day of remembrance. So President Eisenhower signed a bill changing the name of Armistice Day to the more inclusive Veterans Day, a holiday to thank all who had served the United States of America.

Veterans, members of the Honor Guard, in 1976 during then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld’s address at Arlington National Cemetery. (James K.W. Atherton/The Washington Post)

Oct. 12, 1954

Eisenhower published a proclamation in the Federal Register, instructing citizens to recognize Veterans Day on Nov. 11.

He wrote: “On that day, let us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain.”

Victoria Ferguson is comforted by her husband, Phillip Ferguson, at the grave of her brother, David Taylor Miller, at Arlington National Cemetery on Nov. 11, 2015. Miller, who was killed in Afghanistan, would have marked his 25th birthday that Veterans Day. 

(Matt McClain/ The Washington Post)

June 28, 1968

Fifty years after the armistice agreement, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968, which moved Veterans Day from its original Nov. 11 date to the fourth Monday in October. The act also declared that Memorial Day, Columbus Day and Washington’s Birthday would be observed on Mondays throughout the year.

The new dates were meant to take effect in 1971.

As a group of Vietnam veterans hug and pray in 1997, color guards representing several groups march above them.  (Photo by Michael Williamson / The Washington Post)

Oct. 25, 1971

Veterans Day, federally recognized for the first time on a day other than Nov. 11, is celebrated with much confusion. Many states and most veterans organizations disagreed with the date change and continued to celebrate Veterans Day on Nov. 11, which held historic and patriotic importance.

(Vanessa Barnes Hillian/The Washington Post)

Sept. 18, 1975

Congress passed a bill changing the observation of Veterans Day back to Nov. 11, where it has remained for the 47 years since.

Much has changed in the 98 years since Armistice Day was first observed.

Now we honor not just servicemen, but servicewomen. Our wars are not fought with cannons, but with drones. The war to end all wars didn’t end war at all. Soldiers have fought and died all over the globe.

But through the past century, despite its different names and dates, the purpose of Veterans Day has remained the same — to say thanks.

On Nov. 11, 2010, at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., veteran Dwight Holliday, 62, remembers a fallen friend, James Miremont, who died in his arms during the war. Holliday, who was an Army staff sergeant, said that Miremont died from friendly fire.

(Photo by Linda Davidson/ The Washington Post)

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Why This Matters To Me...

I am a veteran, my father and my father's father were veterans and we all served with pride, honor and a measure of shame.  Me I served as a silent and scared gay man before and during "Don't ask, Don't tell". I lived in constant fear that my secret would come to light and I would drummed out of the service.  For my father and my grandfather, their shame was that they both served in a segregated force under fire and in battle, bleeding the same patriot's blood as the white men who served above decks and at the head of the line.  

But we all had this in common, despite the hardships and deprevations of the injustices thrust upon us for no reason other than our color or in my case, my sexual orientation, we loved our nation and were willing to lay down our lives in her defense in the hope that a better country might someday come.  

For all of us including me, those dreams seemed to come true...  

After returning from WWI Europe, my grandfather, who'd been born to former slaves would go on to fight to win the right to vote and work and make a decent living in the factories of Detroit. 

My father, upon returning from some of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific during WWII would extend that progress to "Living the American Dream" as he and my mother worked hard to provide us a very good home and to see their children go to college and have careers that my grandfather could not have imagined.  

And me, I was able to come out of the closet and be honest with those I had served with in silence.  I was even able know the truth of love and stop living in fear... Today, I am a married, openly gay man. I am the father of three and a grandfather as well.

But today, this Veteran's Day seems more solemn than those in recent years... I question whether the progress won by so much blood and by so many lives like my fathers' and mine will be rolled back in this age of renewed hate and pernicious evils... yet I have the same hope of my fathers that things will get better for me and mine, and so the struggle continues.

"Fear Eats the Soul"