When I was in high school in the late 1940s, Nov. 11 was Armistice Day. After morning classes, there was an all-school Patriotic Assembly, complete with appropriate music and a short prayer and a moment of silence in honor of the end of World War I. Then we were dismissed for the day. Yeah! More recently I became the owner of some family correspondence from a great-uncle, dated in 1918. He had worked in a pharmacy in Hedrick, Iowa, and enlisted or was drafted into the U.S. Army at age 24. After a short indoctrination at Fort Des Moines, he was shipped to France. The day the ship docked there was Nov. 11, 1918. Most people today do not know the significance of that date. But I do — it was the day The Armistice was singed, or in effect the war — to end all wars — was over. No, the ship did not turn around and bring him back to the states; there was work there to do. Clean-up, after a brutal war. He spent two or three years in the Army in France doing that before his trip home and discharge. I’m sad to report, he had a hard time readjusting to civilian life.
Margaret Jorris
Newton