Remembering Armistice Day

Note: This post was first published in November, 2011.

I hope all of you have taken a few moments today to consider the sacrifices of the men and women who have served this country, the difficulties faced by the families they leave behind, and to offer a prayer for those still in harm's way on our behalf.

Veterans' Day is the day set aside for such gestures, although our gratitude to those who served goes far beyond a single day each November.

I remember growing up, my grandparents, and even my parents, still called this day Armistice Day, which was the commemoration's original post-World War I name before it was later broadened to include veterans of all wars. Nov. 11 was the day, at the 11th hour of the 11th day, of the 11th month, that the "war to end all wars" ended in 1918. For some, the old name just stuck.

And I sort of like Armistice Day. It's not only a rememberance of war, but what soldiers sacrifice to achieve - peace.

Maybe those who kept the old name were thinking like Kurt Vonnegut, a World War II vet:

...November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy all the people of all nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind. Armistice Day has become Veteran's Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veteran's Day is not... Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.

With all its veterans now gone, World War I gets less attention now. But 500,000 Iowans signed up for the draft once the United States entered the war, nearly 115,000 served and more than 3,500 died.

Among the first Americans killed in the war was Merle Hay. If you grew up where I did in Iowa, "Merle Hay" was a shopping mall in Des Moines. But he was actually  a 20-year-old kid from Glidden:

On November 1 Hay's company moved by truck closer to the front. The next night at 10 p.m. they took up positions. They were 500 yards from the German lines. Company F settled in for what they thought would be an uneventful night.

At about 2:30 a.m. the Germans began an artillery barrage. The men scrambled for cover. The German soldiers, taking advantage of the bombardment noise, blasted holes in the barbed wire between the American and German trenches with explosive charges. The shelling was then concentrated on the area behind the American position, cutting them off from reinforcements. At the same time 240 German infantrymen swarmed through the wire to make their assault.

The outnumbered Americans were caught by surprise as they emerged from their wood and earth shelters to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat amid darkness and confusion. Private Hoyt Decker saw Merle Hay battling two German soldiers with a bayonet in the dim, twinkling light of flares. After 15 minutes the Germans withdrew and the barrage ended. Reinforcements reached the beleaguered Americans soon after to discover five wounded, twelve captured, and three killed.

Merle Hay was among the three killed and thus became the first Iowa soldier to die in combat. His body was found face down in the mud, a .45 caliber pistol in his hand. The cause of death was a single 9 millimeter bullet wound to the head. His throat was deeply cut. The three fallen comrades were buried together in France. A marker was later placed near the graves.

The first American woman killed in the war was also from Iowa. Marion Crandall was born in Cedar Rapids, attended the Sorbonne in Paris and was teaching French at St. Katherine's school in Davenport when the U.S. entered the war:

When America declared war on Germany in 1917, Marion Crandell, believing that her language skills would be useful in besieged France, resigned her position at St. Katherine's and went into active service. The School promised to keep her position open until she returned.

As women were certainly not allowed to participate in combat, Miss Crandell joined the United States Christian Commission of the Y.M.C.A., which at the time was the primary organization in charge of overseas support services* for the Entente and allied troops.

Miss Crandell arrived in France on February 15, 1918, and set to work in the canteen of what was called Le Foyer de Soldat (or “Soldiers' Fireside”) a place for soldiers to rest and have a good meal, read books, and perhaps forget about the war for a few precious moments.

On March 27, 1918, Miss Crandell was working in such a Foyer in St. Menehould, near the front line. German artillery began a bombardment of the town, and a shell destroyed the building in which Miss Crandell had taken shelter.

Three Iowa natives were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery during The Great War. Here's the remarkable citiation for one, Lieutenant Edouard Victor Michel Izac, U.S. Navy:

Rank and organization: Lieutenant, U.S. Navy. Place and date: Aboard German submarine U-90 as prisoner of war, 21 May 1918. Entered service at: Illinois. Born: 18 December 1891, Cresco, Howard County, Iowa. Citation: When the U.S.S. President Lincoln was attacked and sunk by the German submarine U-90, on 21 May 1918, Lt. Izac was captured and held as a prisoner on board the U-90 until the return of the submarine to Germany, when he was confined in the prison camp. During his stay on the U-90 he obtained information of the movements of German submarines which was so important that he determined to escape, with a view to making this information available to the U.S. and Allied Naval authorities. In attempting to carry out this plan, he jumped through the window of a rapidly moving train at the imminent risk of death, not only from the nature of the act itself but from the fire of the armed German soldiers who were guarding him. Having been recaptured and reconfined, Lt. Izac made a second and successful attempt to escape, breaking his way through barbed-wire fences and deliberately drawing the fire of the armed guards in the hope of permitting others to escape during the confusion. He made his way through the mountains of southwestern Germany, having only raw vegetables for food, and at the end, swam the River Rhine during the night in the immediate vicinity of German sentries.  

Izac lived to age 88 and for a time served in Congress representing a California district.

Add any of your own Veterans Day, or Armistice Day, thoughts below.