The Forgotten War Today is the 100th anniversary of the ending of World War I. On the eleventh month of the eleventh day at the eleventh hour, the guns of war finally ceased throughout the ravaged battlefields of Europe. It was technically an Armistice in which neither side surrendered, though Germany was the clear loser. World War I was supposed to be the war to end all wars with about 40 million military and civilian casualties. But sadly that was not the case. Twenty-one years later Europe would be at it again, this time in an even more horrific war that would result in up to 80 million dead. Ask Americans what comes to mind about the First World War and the response is likely to be not very much. The First World War seems in danger of being America s forgotten war. It deserves better. Yes, we may remember Sargent York or Jim Thorpe, or the George M. Cohan song Over There, but the reason for fighting in that war is not at all clear. At the outbreak of war in 1914, the conviction remained widespread that American interests were not directly threatened by events an ocean away. Germany and Austria, France, Britain and Russia were all Christian nations, most with monarchs that were related to one another. Why these nations had to fight each
other was beyond most Americans. The war didn t make any sense and Americans wanted no part of it. In 1916 President Wilson ran for re-election on the slogan, He kept us out of war! Americans were determined not to fight in Europe s war. But that changed in 1917 when Germany announced that it would resume unrestricted submarine warfare, which led to a break in diplomatic relations. On March 18, 1917, three American merchant ships were torpedoed without warning, killing 15 Americans. There was also the German sinking of the cruise ship Lusitania which shocked the conscience of civilized people around the world. Finally, on April 2, 1917, President Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany. The resolution was approved by the Senate (82-6) and by the House (373-50). For the first time in our history, America was now fighting a war across the ocean. It was the end of an age of innocence for America, and like it or not the nation would now be drawn into wars beyond our hemisphere. The 4.7 million troops of the American Expeditionary Force under the leadership of General John J. Pershing fought in trench warfare, suffered poison gas attacks, and sustained enormous casualties just to take a few hundred yards of ground. It was an absurd war that should never have been fought, but it cost America over 116,000 lives, 53,000 dying in combat and 63,000 killed from a 1918 influenza epidemic.
There are stories of World War I that need to be told stories like the nurse Ellen La Mott who often tended the wounded wearing a gas mask, for fear of a German poison gas attack. In 1915 she offered her services at the American Hospital of Paris where she mobilized a cadre of nurses to go to the front and care for the wounded. At one village she refused to abandon the wounded even as the Germans began bombing the village from three in the morning to late afternoon. She stayed and risked her life to save the lives of others. Ellen La Mott wrote eloquently of her experience as a war nurse, wondering about the purpose of what she was doing. She asked, Was it not all a dead-end occupation: nursing back to health men to be patched up and returned to the trenches, or a man to be patched up, court-martialed and shot? And then there was Major Ashby Williams, a Virginia native and practicing lawyer, who found himself under shell fire as he and his troops were moving into position for a campaign. He would write of his experience of shell fire coming towards him: No man can tell what surges through the heart and mind as you lie with your face upon the ground listening to the growing sound of the hellish thing as it comes towards you. You do not think; sorrow only fills the heart; and you only hope and pray. And when the doubly damned thing hits the ground, you take a breath and feel relieved,
and think how good God has been to you again. Ashby Williams was fighting in the Meuse-Argonne campaign which lasted from September 26 through November 11, 1918. It was the last major campaign for the Americans, and it remains the largest and deadliest battle in American history. The 47-day offensive involved more than 1.2 million American troops, 26,000 of whom were killed, with nearly one hundred thousand wounded. The battle only ended with the signing of the Armistice which concluded the war. If you go to the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery today, you will see a beautiful resting place for the largest number of our military dead in Europe, a total of 14,246. These dead all had lives and futures ahead of them. They were farmers, carpenters, industrial workers; office workers, people who worked with their hands or behind a desk. Some were married and even had children. Some were engaged. Some were so young that they went right into the army out of school. Others were university students who had stellar careers ahead of them. And yet, here they all are, dead lives cut short in a senseless war that should never have been fought. World War I had an enormous impact on the lives of Americans and forever changed the course of world history. Americans experienced the vastly expanded administrative regulatory authority of the federal government in matters ranging from
conscription and tax policy to daylight savings time. For better or worse, Americans could no longer be isolated from world affairs. And the world itself changed because of the war. The Austro- Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian Empires all collapsed, and in their places came the rise of Communism, Fascism, and Nazism. Some theologians believe that World War I was the beginning of a post-christian world in which it was no longer possible to believe that Christianity permeated Europe. The war certainly diminished confidence in liberal governments or the prospect of progress. The theologian Karl Barth was so shaken by events that he changed his entire theology and recognized that human sin was pervasive in all human endeavors. There could be no perfect government, no perfect structures or organizations because the human beings who created them were not perfect. The reality of sin, Barth argued, is at the heart of human existence, and the only salvation for any of us is grace. One hundred years after World War I, the question remains: Can we learn from history or are we destined to repeat it? Humanity has yet to answer that question satisfactorily. We do know that the people who fought in World War I were not able to prevent World War II.
A headstone of a British soldier buried a few miles inland from the beaches of Normandy captures the point. The headstone commemorates 30-year-old Sergeant Barber of the Royal Artillery who was killed on August 2, 1944. He was four years old when his father died in France in 1918. The inscription on Sergeant Barber s grave reads: Dear son of Ann Barber. His father killed in action in 1918 is buried at Conde remembered. After the fall of France in World War II, Winston Churchill said: This is no war of chieftains or of princes, of dynasties or national ambition; it is a war of people and of causes. There are vast numbers in every land who will render faithful service in this war, but whose names will never be known, whose deeds will never be recorded. Churchill s words echoed that famous passage in the Book of Sirach: Let us now sing the praise of famous men, our ancestors in their generations, The Lord apportioned to them great glory, his majesty from the beginning. Some of them have left behind a name, so that others declare their praise But of others there is no memory; they had perished as though they had never existed. They have become as though they had never been born, they and their children after them (Sir. 44:1-2, 8-9). We do not know all the names of our war dead, but we still honor them. We honor their sacrifices, their valor, and their willingness
to give themselves to a cause greater than them. The greatest tribute that any of us can give to our war dead is to work for peace biblical peace or shalom the justice and harmony that make for an equitable social order the peace that brings people together rather than sets them apart the peace that rejects racial prejudice and ethnic cleansing the peace that reconciles differences rather than magnifies them the peace that knows that victory is only certain when we learn how to outlove our enemies and not out-hate them. A few years ago a university student was being interviewed by a reporter on her reaction to Western nations taking a stronger stand against the Syrian government for gassing its own people. The reporter mentioned the massive refugee exodus from Syria. After all, didn t it make sense for the West to take action against a government that used chemical weapons to kill its people and stamp out dissent? The university student replied that she was against any kind of military action because in her words, There s nothing worth dying for. That means, of course, that one day she will have the unpleasant task of dying for nothing. What a different mindset from that of Winston Churchill who almost singlehandedly gave the British Empire the resolve not to capitulate to Hitler, even when some in the British government, including Lord Halifax, wanted to begin peace negotiations.
On May 15, 1940, just after Holland had fallen and the withdrawal from Dunkirk was being planned and the Battle of Britain on the horizon, Churchill gave a speech in the House of Commons that made reference to the First Book of Maccabees in the Apocrypha. He said: Today is Trinity Sunday. Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be. I know some of us may shun Churchill s words as the vestige of a bygone era. And yet, in our better moments, we know there has to be something to sacrifice for. Like the young French soldier in World War I who was seriously wounded. Surgeons had to amputate his arm. The young man regained consciousness, and the surgeon leveled with him: I m sorry, he said, but you have lost your am. Sir, the young soldier replied, I didn t lose it. I gave it for France. No one likes war, and most wars throughout history have been brutal and senseless. And yet, we also understand the wisdom of Edmund Burke s famous maxim that the only thing that allows evil
to triumph is for good people to do nothing. At some point, even the most peaceful people must be prepared to respond to violence with force. In 1908 the British Ambassador to Sweden, Cecil Spring Rice, wrote a poem which he called in Latin Urbs Dei (The City of God) or The Two Fatherlands. The poem describes a Christian s loyalties to his country on earth and his country in heaven. Rice put the poem aside when in 1912 he was appointed as Ambassador to the United States, where he influenced the administration of President Woodrow Wilson to abandon neutrality and join Britain in the war against Germany. After the United States entered the war, Rice was recalled to Britain. By this time Rice had gotten the reports of the mounting British and Allied casualties, numbers that stunned him in the sheer magnitude of dead. As it turned out, eighteen million people would die in the First World War, 11 million military and 7 million civilians. There would be 22 million wounded, many severely so. Rice was brokenhearted by the massive number of dead and wounded. Shortly before his departure from the United States to Britain in January 1918, Rice returned to his poem Urbs Dei and re-wrote and re-named it, significantly altering the first verse to concentrate on the huge losses suffered by British and Allied soldiers during
the intervening years. In 1921, Gustav Holst put the poem to music from a section of Jupiter from his suite The Planets to create one of the most beloved hymns in the English language: I Vow to Thee, My Country. The hymn is usually printed with the first and third stanzas but here is the original version with all three stanzas. I vow to thee my country all earthly things above Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love; The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test, That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best; The love that never falters, the love that pays the price, The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice. I heard my country calling, away across the sea, Across the waves and waters, she calls and calls to me. Her sword is girded at her side, her helmet on her head, And round her feet are lying the dying and the dead; I hear the noise of battle, the thunder of her guns; I haste to thee, my mother, a son among thy sons. And there s another country, I ve heard of long ago, Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know; We may not count her armies, we may not see her King; Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride her suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase, And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace. On this anniversary of the end of World War I, as our honored war dead gave their lives for the peaceable kingdom, so may we give our lives in service to a gospel of life. Let us resolve to build a civilization of love where hate and prejudice, bigotry and xenophobia are wiped from the face of the earth. Let us make every effort to bring about a world of justice, freedom and peace for all people, and let us never be unwavering in our commitment to human dignity and human rights. That indeed is something worth living for, and even worth dying for. Dr. Gary Nicolosi November 11, 2018 Text Sirach 44: 1-15 Veterans Day