Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
“In Flanders Field”;, Lt Col. John McCrae

November 11, 1918, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the guns fell
silent. After four years of slaughter and devastation, “The Great War, The War to End All Wars, The Great War for Civilization”, World War I, was over.

For the British Empire and the French Republic and the Russian Empire –the Allies — as well as
their enemies, Imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire –the Central
Powers — the war began in exuberation, it ended in relief, sorrow, despair, cynicism, and
tragedy. Post war literature conveyed that loss: Laurence Stallings, himself a marine wounded
in action, and Maxwell Anderson’s ” What Price Glory” recounted the grim existence of marines at the front, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, the experience of an American in Italian service, and one of the most poignant novels of all, German veteran Erich Maria Remarque’s
semi-autobiographical, All Quiet on the Western Front, so powerful as a film that the star, Lou
Ayres, became a pacifist, refusing to fight even in WW II.

The war changed the European landscape. Whole villages had been obliterated, towns lost
every young man, four Empires had been extinguished — Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman
Empire disappeared from the map, the German monarchy was abolished, and in Russia, Lenin’s
communists took control, then murdered Czar Nicholas and royal family. Europe had not
experienced such calamity since the Thirty Years War three centuries before. Victorious Britain
and France were bankrupt, most of a generation wiped out. The chapel at St Cyr, the French
military academy, where the names of dead were listed, for the class of 1914 “all”.

Infuriated by German atrocities upper class Americans enlisted with the allies before the US
joined the fight. Americans formed the Lafayette Escadrille, an all-American air squadron to
fight, and die, for France. Their crumbling and repaired memorial was rededicated April 20th,
2016. Edward Mandell Stone, Harvard 1908, did not wait, joined the French Foreign Legion,
and died from his wounds, February 1915. Robert Herbert dropped out of college, joined the
Canadian Army, was wounded, transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, later the Royal Air Force,
and found himself in Texas training RFC pilots while the US was still neutral. When after a long life he died at his son’s home in Pensacola, a Royal Navy carrier happened to be in port. The RN honored him with a fly-over telling is son, Capt. Bruce Herbert, a US Navy aviator, “Her Majesty does not forget”.

As America entered the war there those who were, or who would become famous. Poet Joyce
Kilmer, already a fixture on the literary circuit, transferred from New York’s fashionable 7th
Regiment, to the more rambunctious 69th New York, the “Fighting Irish” commanded by Wall
Street lawyer, Col. William Donovan who would head the OSS in World War II. Promoted
sergeant, Kilmer was killed by a sniper at the Second Battle of the Marne. Among American
veterans there were the writers Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald,
composer Cole Porter, actor Humphrey Bogart and comedian Jack Benny, both of whom served
in the Navy.

Other war veterans, obscure at the time, would rise to prominence when war came again in
1941. George Marshall, a division staff officer, would become army Chief-of-Staff, later
Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and author of the Marshall Plan. Fleet Admiral King
rose from a staff officer with the Atlantic Fleet to be Chief of Naval Operations. Most prominent
of all, Dwight Eisenhower, a training officer became Supreme Commander of Allied forces in
Europe and later 34th President.

With peace Americans retreated behind our ocean moats and recoiled at European
involvement. Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations treaty went down to defeat in the Senate, congressional hearings on war profiteering left Americans aghast. Americans wanted to be left alone; “The War to End All Wars” had given them their fill of foreign conflicts. All notions of
isolationism, however, came crashing down on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941 when in President
Franklin Roosevelt’s words to Congress asking for a declaration of war, “the United States of
America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” Four years of world war lay ahead.

Since the end of WW II Americans have been to war in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. For decades
US military and naval power confronted the might of the Soviet Union across a divided Europe
until that evil empire rotting, from the inside, came crashing down.

Armistice Day became Veterans’ Day in 1954, signed into law by President Eisenhower. Since then, the importance of Armistice Day has faded in the public memory. It should not. For the war military and civilian deaths for all belligerents’ range between 15-22 million, with another 23 million wounded. Military cemeteries add solemnity to long ago battlefields. Dangers remain,
however, as even today, ancient munitions make French fields too dangerous to cross. The
“Great War” shattered civilization and set the stage for the Second World War and just possibly
for horrors yet to come.

©2022 by William Layer

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William Layer

Lt. Colonel Civil Affairs, USAR (ret) served twenty-six years in the regular and reserve components of the US Army. He was civil military liaison for the 260th Military Police, DC National Guard, State Public Affairs Officer, Commander of the Public Affairs unit and a counter-drug intelligence analyst. Transferring to the 352 Civil Affairs Command as monuments and archives officer, he became the Command Public Affairs Officer in Iraq as well as liaison to local Iraqi leaders and acting Secretary to the General Staff. He was instrumental in recovering photographic artifacts of the Iraqi Royal family while in Baghdad. He was wounded in action in an ambush in Feb. 2004 for which he was awarded the Purple Heart.
In his civilian career he worked primarily in Army Public Affairs and for the Air Force as historian to the presidential wing in the early Reagan administration and later for Air Force Legislative Liaison covering congressional hearings and assisting in preparing testimony for senior leaders.
His essays and reviews have appeared in the scholarly and popular press including Asian Affairs and the Washington Times. He is co-author, with Ali Wahab, of The Iraqi Royal Family, a Collection of Photographs Recovered from The Ruins of the Zuhur Palace, 2004.
A native New Yorker, he holds a BA with honors in history from Findlay College (Ohio) and an MA in history from The Ohio State University. He is a graduate of the US Army Command & General Staff College and was graduated with distinction US Naval War College with a MA in National Security and Strategic Studies.

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