I received a missive yesterday from someone asking if I had today off, which at first surprised me; as a general rule November 11 is no longer a bank holiday in most locales, at least here in the States. It has been a long time now, but as I remember it when I worked at the public library twenty-five years ago we were closed for the observation. Many schools were off as well. I don’t believe that is still the case. Nineteen thirty-four was the first year that Armistice Day—today called Veterans Day—was marked as a legal holiday in the United States. Armistice Day 1934 was observed on November 12th, because the 11th fell on a Sunday. Seven thousand New Yorkers, including the Gold Star mothers we see above, turned out in Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx to mark the sixteenth anniversary of the end of the Great War. Almost 1000 men from the Bronx were killed in France. They had the traditional invocation and two-minute silence along with featured speakers and the like. Curiously, there was even a battle reenactment. It was just one of several events spread across the boroughs. Wherever you are, pause and reflect on those not-so-long-ago events still very much shaping our circumstances today.

(image/Gold Star mothers in Pelham Bay Park, Armistice Day observation 1934/NYPL Digital)

Armistice Day, Harlem 1919

I wanted to take a moment this morning to observe Veterans Day and recognize uniformed service persons past and present.

This was the scene in Harlem at 134th Street and Lenox Avenue 100 years ago today on the first anniversary of Armistice. The headlines from the newspaper of November 1919 indicate the difficulty of the peace. One newspaper headline described New Yorkers’ mood as “sober” as people gathered in churches and elsewhere to remember the living and the dead of 1914-18. All posts of the nascent American Legion in New York held events that November 11th. The mood was similar in Europe, where the French were reflecting on the negotiations at Versailles while Ferdinand Foch and others observed a mass at the Invalides. The British throughout the Empire observed two minutes of silence.

(image/NYPL)

I hope everyone’s holiday season is going well.

There was no slowing down in late 1917: that Christmas was the first after the United States officially joined in the fight. Prolific artist L.N. Britton produced this poster for the American Red Cross’s nationwide holiday membership campaign. The drive to reach 10,000,000 new members officially began on December 17th. New York City’s quota in that was set at a cool 500,000. Tammany Hall–still going strong nearly two decades into the twentieth century–boosted Red Cross membership in Manhattan by sending almost 9,000 of its own canvassing door-to-door. The initiative for new members proceeded smoothly enough, though on December 18th Red Cross officials in Washington D.C. called off the request for a Christmas Eve candle in every window; the National Board of Fire Underwriters convinced Red Cross leaders that such displays would be a safety hazard. Service flags, and in many cases electric lights, did go out on many windowsills as planned.

The Red Cross hit its 10,000,000 goal by Christmas, and with a week’s extension doubled that number by year’s end. Ironically, in some predominantly German-American regions such as Brenham, Texas it was vigilantism and threats of violence that put local quotas over the top. History is complicated.

Enjoy the day, everyone.

(image/Pennsylvania State University Libraries)

Battle of Amiens: German prisoners about to carry British wounded off on stretchers. Sailly-le-Sec, 8 August 1918.

In a vey real sense the beginning of the end of the First World War began one hundred years ago today; it was on August 8, 1918 that Supreme Allied Commander Ferdinand Foch began the counteroffensive that was itself a response to Ludendorff’s own Spring Offensive. This was hardly just a French military campaign; the British, Canadians, and Australians were also integral to the fighting against the Germans. The Americans played a supporting role as well. I saw on the news today that Prince William and others were on hand to mark the occasion. The Amiens Offensive lasted one week. The Allies suffered about 60,000 casualties and the Germans about 27,000 in addition to having almost 30,000 taken prisoner.

We are getting into the stage of the Great War centennial where events are going to move extremely quickly between now and the anniversary of the Armistice. Historians eventually called the period from August 8 to November 11 the Hundred Days Offensive. It was hard, full on fighting from here to the end. The Hundred Days Offensive was an extraordinary human drama. Men on all sides would be pushed to the limit, and the ambulance drivers, nurses and doctors who tried to put them back together faced extraordinary challenges. Every day had its own individual tragedies, multiplied thousands fold.

No one knew at the time when or how it would all end, but August 8, 1918 proved a crucial turning point in the Great War.

(image by Lieutenant John Warwick Brooke; Courtesy Imperial War Museum)