Tell Me a Story: I Remember

Today is Veterans Day. It began as Armistice Day on Nov. 11, 1919. This was the first anniversary of the end of World War I – the war to end all wars. In 1954 President Eisenhower changed the name to Veterans Day. The idea being that this day would be for remembering both the dead and living veterans who served during war and/or peacetime.

WWI began for a whole bunch of fucked up reasons. The igniting spark though was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary.

In June 1914, a Serbian-nationalist terrorist group called the Black Hand sent groups to assassinate the Archduke. … a Serbian nationalist named Gavrilo Princip assassinated him and his wife while they were in Sarajevo, Bosnia which was part of Austria-Hungary. This was in protest to Austria-Hungary having control of this region. Serbia wanted to take over Bosnia and Herzegovina. This assassination led to Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia. When Russia began to mobilize due to its alliance with Serbia, Germany declared war on Russia. Thus began the expansion of the war to include all those involved in the mutual defense alliances. (source)

There were 20 million total deaths and 21 million more wounded. Civilian deaths – from starvation, exposure, disease, encounters with the various war machines and massacres – are estimated to have been 10 MILLION. Soldier deaths are estimated at 9.7 MILLION.

Can you wrap your mind around that number of ended way too early, gone before their time humans? Imagine if everyone in NYC (population 8.623 million), London (population 8.136 million) and Los Angeles (population 4 million) all died. Imagine these towns as completely empty ghost cities. No one left.

The extinguished lives of WWI died because a bunch of tiny dicked, power mad, despotic shitheels – nationalists on ultra steroids, felt the need to expand their spheres of control, their wealth and power.

75,000,000 civilians and soldiers were killed during WWII and that’s not including the 17 million Jewish (and Roma and gays and political foes, prisoners of war and “incurably sick”) dead. Oh but this was a "good" war, you say? Ending Hitler’s reign was imperative to say the very, VERY, motherfucking least. Still, could we mebbe have avoided the devastation of Dresden? Could we have possibly found a better way to end war with Japan? Ya know, without ending SO many lives?

58,220 soldiers died while in Vietnam and as many as 2 million civilian lives were blown out of existence.

In Bush Jr.’s Iraq war for oil, there have been 204,572 civilian deaths. U.S. military deaths total 4,424 total with 31,952 wounded in action. Safer to be in uniform than civvies, eh?

Humans – CAN WE PLEASE STOP THIS SHIT?! Ya know, can we please discover the beauteous, low death-toll efficacy of diplomacy?

Today I’m thinking on, I’m remembering my friends and lovers who've survived bullshit wars and those who didn’t.

NO ONE comes back from war unscathed.