A century after World War I, mourning lessons not learned

The dark faces in the crowd seemed to be in sync with the cold and wet weather as the first of the 21 bells rang Sunday at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery and elsewhere to mark the armistice that ended the First World War.

The fighters of this war and almost all the civilians are gone.

Those who wore jackets and sheltered from a pouring rain under umbrellas during the ceremony of one hour and 25 minutes wore an inimitable technology – digital cameras, digital cameras , video recorders and hand-held cell phones that captured the moment and shared with the world instantly.

By the end of the First World War, films had existed for about 20 years only. "Talkies" will not become popular until the Depression. Radio, a relatively new technology, fell under government control in 1912 – the year of the Titanic sinking. The typhoid vaccine became available to the public two years later, but polio was going to terrorize the decades to come.

The war, on the other hand, was quite modern. Tanks, machine guns, artillery, mustard gas, planes and diseases filled the cemeteries of Europe during the four years of the First World War. On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, Britain lost 57,470 soldiers, 19,240 of whom were killed, according to the BBC. By the end of the war, 65 million people would die.

British writer H.G. Wells called it "the war to end all wars", but that was only a down payment. Another 60 million people would perish during the Second World War, two-thirds of them civilians, and other conflicts would follow in Korea, Vietnam, the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Bitter clashes would fill the history books – Bastogne, Tarawa, Chosin, Hue and the second battle of Fallujah, called Operation Phantom Fury.

"I pay tribute to those who sacrifice their efforts, but I mourn that as a species, we have not deciphered the code," said retired Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Tripp, 55, formerly fighter of the war in Iraq. and faucets. "I wish people who are smarter than me can understand how to avoid that."

The thought echoed with other veterans at the cemetery, a traditional Veterans Day gathering place in a city called "Military City, United States of America" ​​because of its close ties to the military. land and the Air Force. He hosted some of the country's best-known commanders, from Robert E. Lee and John J. Pershing to Douglas MacArthur and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The city has long marked this holiday with a solemn ceremony, with patriotic music, solemn rituals including the display of colors, the Texas Children's Choir, traveled the world, and a naturalization ceremony that saw eight people become US citizens this year.

Some wore military uniforms.

Tripp's wife, Katherine, tore herself up when she saw an elderly veteran, perhaps in her sixties, cheering as the choir was rehearsing "The Stars and Stripes". One of the first to arrive, he got up with the help of his son and sang "The Air Force Song" during the service of the ceremony.

"It was the first time I heard his voice. He sang with great enthusiasm, "she said.

The Air Force veteran, Tom Pike, worked in a contingency hospital in Germany during the First World War.

He did not go to the war zone.

"I'm lucky to be a veteran who did not have to give up his life," said Pike, who served for 21 years, half of which was praised, before retiring as captain.

In many ways, the ceremony was similar to what it had been for years, until the rain fell, but the focus on the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War made it different. The bells rang not only at the cemetery, where 7,331 World War I veterans are buried, but also at St. Mary's University. There, in the cities of Fredericksburg and Houston in the Lone Star state, the sound of the ringing bells filled the air, as did the cracking gunshots and, finally, the haunted silence.

Veterans Day has been proclaimed Armistice Day. The United States, Britain and France declared the ceasefire that ended the First World War at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. Congress redefined the day by 1954 to honor all those who serve in the wars of America.

The Texans played an important role in the war, with about 200,000 soldiers serving from August 1917 to the end, most of them in France. The 36th and 90th infantry divisions were called and, although most of the soldiers going to war were men, 450 women were nurses, according to the Texas World War I Centenary Committee.

A total of 5,170 Texans died, including seven women from the United States Army and Navy Nursing Corps. One-third of all deaths occurred in the United States because of the 1918 influenza epidemic. Four Texans received the Medal of Honor, one from San Antonio. Given the posthumous medal, Pvt. David Bennes Barkley was Hispanic.

Despite the seriousness of the war, it has helped shape the future of home care veterans. Initially, the changes were minimal, but a series of conflicts far from US shores would occur in the coming decades.

In 1921, Congress combined all World War I veterans programs into one to create the Veterans Affairs Bureau. The Public Health Veterans' Hospitals were transferred to the office and an ambitious hospital construction program for World War I veterans was launched.

Soldiers exposed to mustard gas and other chemicals required special care, which led to the opening of TB and neuropsychiatric hospitals. Benefits were expanded to cover non-service-related disabilities and in 1928, admission to office offices was extended to women, the National Guard and militia veterans.

The VA was created two years later.

The Veterans Health Administration began as the first establishment for veterans of the Army's Civil War Army. President Abraham Lincoln signed a law establishing a national asylum for soldiers and sailors in 1865. It is now the largest of the three VA administrations. Budget of $ 208.8 billion. According to the VA, about 19.6 million veterans would still be alive by September 30. Only 496,777 of these survivors served in the Second World War, a conflict involving 16 million Americans.

With Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the Second World War was the first of three major American conflicts that took place over the next 34 years. Korea and Vietnam followed suit, producing 1.7 million and 3.4 million veterans in the theater of war and millions of others serving this era. There are only 16,349 soldiers who have served in all three wars, but since then millions of others have fought in Grenada, Panama, the First World War, Iraq, Afghanistan and Afghanistan. 39 other parts of the world, including Syria.

The war on terror has been going on for 17 years.

Retired Army Staff Sergeant Steve Zavala, a veteran of Operation Just Cause, the 1989 Panama invasion, put an end to the freezing cold, especially compared to the privations endured by the troops during the wars that broke out in Valley Forge, the residence of the Continental Army of George Washington in 1777.

"We are taking a look at the independence war (…) and the real test of Valley Forge," said Zavala, 61, of Wilson County. "We are conducting trench warfare during the First World War, we see the horrors of Bastogne and we see the little Chosin in Korea, the misery of Vietnam. It continues today, so it 's nothing.

Sig Christenson covers the army and its impact in the area of ​​San Antonio and Bexar County. Read it on our free website, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | [email protected] | Twitter: @saddamscribe