Veterans Day
November 11th, 2026 is the 108th anniversary of the WW1's Armistice. The Great War - sometimes less poetically called the Butchers' War - ended at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Too bad for the guy who got shot at 10am.
In the US, it's now celebrated as Veterans Day. It's the only public holiday in common with France, which also has one for WW2. I imagine that US leaders at the time decided that we could have people not work for every war in history and grouped all military celebrations under a single holiday. It makes sense though.
World Wars happened a long time ago. There is pretty much as much time between Napoleonic Wars and WW1 than between WW1 and today (I just thought about that and I'm mindblown!). About half a century had already passed since WW2 when I was born.
Yet, there is something special thinking about US Veterans as Frenchman living in the US. Twice, young men crossed the ocean to fight, and sometimes died, in and for a country that was not theirs. Of course, there is a lot more than that: drafts, US power projection, politics, etc. But an individual level, there is hardly a greater sacrifice. Without this sacrifice, without thousands of Americans, British and Canadians giving their lives on June 6th, 1944, my own life would very likely have been different.
And for that, we ought to be forever grateful.
My grand-mother was a kid during the German occupation. Unfortunately, I was a kid too when we spent time together, so I didn't think to ask to know more. But I remember that one comment, that somehow stuck:
De toute façon, pendant la guerre, on avait rien à bouffer.
Anyway, during the war, we had nothing to eat.