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Sunday, November 11, 2007

Veteran's Day

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

Today marks the 89th year since the "War to End All Wars", better known as the First World War, reached a cessation of hostilities. As before it, wars continued to break out (why we now call it simply "World War I"), and some continued despite the armistice.

Continued despite the armistice?

Yes.

While seldom mentioned in most American History Classes, American Soldiers were sent to safeguard supplies that had been sent to Czarist Russia before it capitulated, and to assist in the transfer of released prisoners from Siberia to Europe. These men were still doing that mission more than a year after the fighting in Europe stopped. They were the first to see the "New Soviet Man" in combat, and the first to see the excesses of the Commissars to make sure the "New Soviet Man" would do his duty.

These American Soldiers did their duty in the frozen wastes around Murmansk (which would become the destination of American Lend Lease supplies to the Soviet Union in World War II) and along the Trans-Siberian rail road. In the end, their political masters decided that the effort was not worth pursuing, and they were recalled home.

There were no ticker-tape parades down Broadway for these men, some of whom lay to this day in those frozen lands.

It would be well to remember that not all Americans who served are recognized for their service. Indeed, even after the Korean War "ended", American soldiers (and soldiers of our Allies) continued to be killed in skirmishes launched by the North Korean regime for years after, even during the Vietnam conflict Americans were being killed in the DMZ between North and South Korea. They were not big splashy events, just a few men here and a few men there.

When a war ends, the fighting does not necessarily completely stop, and some of those men and women who wear your country's uniform may continue to fight to keep that peace that the politicians have agreed to.