Today is Veterans Day, and a friend of mine shared a photojournal story from The Atlantic from last May on the fading remains of battlefields from World War 1, which ended 100 years ago this year. You can see it here. My dad’s father fought in WW1 on the side of the Germans. He was a farm boy and was needed to drive the horse-drawn ammunition carts that were supplying the front lines. Our family was fortunate that he survived this terrible war and that he emigrated from Germany to the United States in the mid 1920’s. Today we remember the soldiers of all wars and the families they left behind and thank them for their service.
DIKSMUIDE, BELGIUM – JULY 14: Wild poppies grow in the ‘Trench of Death’, a preserved Belgian World War One trench system on July 14, 2017 in Diksmuide, Belgium. July 31, 2017 marks the centenary of one of the bloodiest battles of World War One, The Battle of Passchendaele, also known as The Third Battle of Ypres in which almost 325,000 Allied troops and 260,000 Germans were killed. The poppy has become an internationally recognised symbol of remembrance after it grew in the war-ravaged and muddied landscape of Belgian Flanders. The sight of the poppy growing by the graves of soldiers inspired Canadian soldier John McCrae to write one of the most famous World War One poems, ‘In Flanders Fields’. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)
