Cord Byrd: “this Friday, November 11, is celebrated in this country as Veterans Day. It is always held on the 11th of November in…”

“this Friday, November 11, is celebrated in this country as Veterans Day. It is always held on the 11th of November in memory of the end of World War I. In that ``War to End All Wars'' what wishful, optimistic thinking. All guns were laid down on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, at 11 o'clock a.m. on November 11, 1918. On that fateful hour, I am sure that many prayers of thanksgiving flew heavenward as Doughboys and their families rejoiced at their survival in spite of the most bitter and horrible fighting the world had yet experienced. World War I saw the introduction of new and more deadly forms of warfare, as technology and chemistry were brought to bear on the battlefield. Horses were replaced by the first crude tanks and self- propelled guns. Monoplanes and biplanes brought warfare to the skies overhead for the first time. Chemical weapons, terrible and deadly, clouded the trenches. Diseases stalked the fields as well, from trenchfoot to the deadly Spanish flu that killed combatants and civilians alike. It was a dreadful time, one that would surely erase the desire to battle, if only that desire could be wiped from the human genome. In 2005, in wake of World War II, the Korean war, the Vietnam conflict, the cold war and repeated conflicts in the Balkans, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan, World War I seems almost quaint. There was no threat of nuclear war bringing vast destruction to our homeland.…”