Remember!

Today we honor those who served.

It all started 90 years ago, when the guns fell silent in Europe. The War to End All Wars. Didn't work out that way, but it wasn't because of lack of effort on their part.

People nowadays look at the old photographs, of those who are long gone, and don't really connect. Press them and they'll say, sure, WWI was pretty bad. But then they'll shrug and go about their day without thinking any more of it.

The trenches were nothing but mud and shit and blood, with a bunch of rotting corpses thrown in for good measure. The mud turned to glue when the rains came, able bodied soldiers struggling and drowning in the muck like insects in a roach motel. When winter set in the mud froze into something harder than concrete, but they had to keep chipping away at it or else die when the artillery started screaming in. And this was on the days when the enemy didn't shoot at anyone. But there were really no days like that.

These guys wanted to live just as much as anyone who is reading this now. They didn't want to go, but they did anyway. They saw it as a way to make the world a better place.

The United States was the last country to get involved, Great Britain one of the first. There are two people in the US who served in that conflict and still live, four in England. As Milo tells us, there are a few of them that can still get around. We will all lose something when courage like that is finally extinguished.

There is a very moving tribute to more recent veterans over at Defiant Infidel's. He and Miradena put together a little video featuring pictures of family and friends of their readers, and all the pictures are of people who are serving now or did so in the past. Worth your time.