“This is a war to end all wars.” —Woodrow Wilson.
This week we remembered the one hundred and first anniversary of the end of World War I, the Great War, the War to End All Wars. The war officially ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Last year at eleven in the morning on November 11th or Veterans Day, bells tolled in churches all over the globe. to remember the 100th anniversary of the end of the War. Special programs about the war were held around the world, most notably in England and in Paris, France, where the world’s diplomats met to commemorate the peace accord that ended the war.
Both of my grandfathers served in the war and came home. I never heard one grandfather speak of his experience. The other, Grandfather Whaley, rarely talked about the war itself, but did have a lot to say about his experience in the army. He was born in what is now the Great Smokey Mountain National Park. Going into the armed service was his higher education.
When I was in college, my grandfather wrote to me every week on his old typewriter, on which several keys would often get stuck. The lines of type were uneven. Every letter, however, was full of his army experiences and how he related it to my new life in college. He would remind me that the best lessons were to be found in the people I would meet and the places where I would travel. Almost every sentence ended with etc., etc., etc.
I kept every one of his letters. The girls on my floor in my dorm would gather each week to hear about his wisdom from his life experiences a half-century earlier in the army in World War I—and about his present life in small-town Virginia.
Did I forget to tell you also that my grandfather always enclosed a dollar bill with each letter?
Joanna . joannaseibert.com
