Tuesday is Veterans Day. It's a time of remembrance and gratitude, honoring the men and women who have served in the U.S. military, particularly those who died while serving. Guest Commentator Christopher Warren is a veteran and the chief curator at the National World War One Museum in Kansas City. We asked him to reflect on the meaning of Veterans Day and the conflict that was once called "the war to end all wars."
(Transcript)
Poppies Are Fields of Remembrance
By Dr. Christopher Warren
Nine thousand poppies appear to stare upward at people standing on the glass bridge at the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City. They are silent, placid, though each poppy represents one thousand combatant deaths. Nine million combat deaths in total.
Poppies are a powerful symbol of World War 1. Their seeds can lie dormant in the earth for years, until stirred and fed — by footsteps, by bombs, by human blood.
After battle, they would bloom quickly around the fallen. Pilots flying overhead could trace the war’s scars by the fields of red below.
This haunting image means something to me — not only as the Chief Curator of the National WWI Museum and Memorial but as an Air Force veteran and intelligence officer who served in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, South Korea — and at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
Most importantly, though, as an American. A thankful one.
To truly appreciate Veterans Day, we must understand the calamity that catalyzed it — World War One. The armistice of November 11, 1918, ended four years of the first genuine global conflict. It claimed forty million dead and injured and forever changed modern warfare, diplomacy and society.
Veterans Day, then referred to as Armistice Day, began one year later in 1919. It honored those who served — many of them citizen soldiers — who faced the first industrialized combat the world had ever seen.
Though more than a century has passed, the impacts of the Great War can still be felt today — socially, politically and culturally. Borders redrawn by the war still shape global tensions and alliances. The League of Nations presaged the United Nations. Modern humanitarian law sprang from the chaos. Medicine, aviation, telecommunications, synthetic materials and women’s roles in society all advanced because of wartime necessity and innovation.
The First World War continues to shape our world — and our collective memory. It remains important to study the war.
The silence at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, like the silence of those poppies looking up from the field, symbolizes both relief and remembrance — marking not triumph, but tragedy endured.
That steady, continual gaze of the poppies beneath the glass bridge carries a single message:
Remember.
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Veterans Day events at the National World War One Museum.
Dr. Christopher Warren is the Chief Curator at the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City. He received his officer’s commission in the U.S. Air Force through the University of Kansas ROTC program. He has worked at Arlington National Cemetery, the Library of Congress, U.S. Air Force History and Museum, and the Naval History and Heritage Command. Warren returned to Kansas City after being a part of the Smithsonian Institution.