Happy Veterans Day!

The term "Veterans Day," by the way, is strictly American. The rest of the world (and the US until 1954) knows this day as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day, celebrating the end of World War I. While America participated at the end of the war, I can see why Europe remembers the Armistice much more intensely. Europe's population still feels the effect of losing so many young people, or as Katharine Tynan wrote, losing "the flower of youth."

There are tons of articles online, but here some of my favorites:

The BBC has an article on the remembrances of World War I by 112-year-old Henry Allingham, Britain's oldest living man and also the oldest of the UK's three surviving Great War veterans. On hearing news of the Armistice, the Royal Air Force mechanic says he "crept off into a corner somewhere and got a good night's sleep for the first time in years."

Reuters UK has a story on those last three veterans and their attendance at London's official ceremony honoring the Armistice. I love one of the pictures they posted. These men are, from left to right, ages 112, 110, and 108. They look so happy and lively.

ArtsJournal.com has audio taken of British cannons launching gas shells on Lille, France in October 1918, and it is just amazing to me to hear audio from that time. The man who recorded the guns' reports, Will Gaisberg, said that he and his fellow sound engineers

unpacked our recording machines and made our preparations before getting directly behind a battery of great 4.5' guns and 6' howitzers, camouflaged until they looked at close quarters like giant insects. Here the machine could well catch the finer sounds of the "singing," the "whine," and the "scream" of the shells, as well as the terrific reports when they left the guns.