On the recordJanuary 29, 1997
Each year Americans give pause on Veterans Day to remember and honor the millions of men and women who have donned the uniforms of our great Nation in defense of freedom and democracy. It is a time set aside for our Nation to recognize the vanguard of freedom--American's veterans. Our national tradition of honoring American veterans on a special day began one year after World War I ended. On November 11, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed that each November 11 was to be commemorated as ``Armistice Day,'' a day of remembrance to honor the 116,000 American ``doughboys,'' who, in World War I, died on the battlefields of Europe. The Great War--that's what we called World War I. Sometimes, in our idealism, we called it ``the war to end all wars.'' Of course, we could not know that just two decades later another war would engulf the world.…
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