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1918. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The guns became quiet and the Great War in Europe ended.
The French commemorate the Armistice, as the French Embassy is doing now at the Pantheon Frances. The British Commonwealth has Remembrance Day, which the British Embassy will sponsor at Christ Church this Sunday. Our oldest and dearest allies use this day to remember and honor their dead of the two World Wars, as it is right and proper to do.
However, since 1954, we Americans have been different. We do not just remember those who paid the ultimate price in the service of the United States. We do not just remember specific conflicts. Rather, we remember all those who have served our nation in uniform, in times of both war and peace, in conflicts both great and small. We Americans remember all of our Veterans.
That we choose to honor all of our Veterans is perhaps unique to the American mind. It speaks of American hope. Hope for our nation. Hope for our future. We honor men and women who looked to the future. We honor men and women who came home, laid their uniforms aside, and built new lives.... men and women who, upon their return, built America and sustained the American ideals of life, liberty and happiness. We honor men and women who left their loves, their lives, and the comforts of their homes to don the uniform of the United States to ensure that those ideals would not disappear from the world.
Americans have time and time again answered the call of duty. In the past 230 years, Americans have served the cause of liberty on every continent and every sea, an unbroken chain of service reaching back to Lexington and Concord. And our cause has always been the defense of freedom and peace. Peace has been and is tenuous, but thanks to the service of America’s Veterans, freedom endures and the world is a living memorial to those who have served.
On this day when we honor all those who defended the American people, all those who tended to the wounded, all those who brought solace to the dying, all those who have served on land, on the seas, and in the air, we thank our Veterans for their service and the blessing of freedom that their sacrifices, great and small, have brought us. On this day when we remember all those who have served in the uniform of the United States, we hope for the peace for which they fought and we remember the words of Franklin Roosevelt to which every American veteran is a testament: “Freedom is not free.”
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