While I would never want to appear to minimize the sacrifices that continue to be made on my behalf by the men and women in the armed forces, I do think we tend to forget the history behind what has become Veterans Day here in the US.

In addition to thanking all who have served, I would like to take a minute to remember why it is that most of the Western world comes to a halt at 11:00 AM on the eleventh day of the eleventh month...

"It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind." (Kurt Vonnegut)