An Identity Crisis for a National Holliday—Armistice or Veterans Day

  

Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, First Sea Lord, and Marshal Ferdinand Foch (standing), the French leader of the Allied forces,  accept the German surrender ending fighting in the Great War. 

Note:  A return of a semi-regular post.  But it will be new and news to some of you.

11/11/11.  That’s how Americans remembered the Armistice that went into effect on November 11, 1918 at 11 a.m. local time in France ending hostilities on the Western Front in what was up to that time the most catastrophically bloody war in history.  The German High Command signed the armistice just two days after revolutionaries in Berlin overthrew Kaiser Wilhelm and proclaimed a Republic. The shooting part of the Great War was over.  It would not officially end until the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919.

President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation declaring the day as Armistice Day, an occasion for national Thanksgiving and prayer.  Americans and the world were thankful, but they were more in the mood for wild celebration that day than for sober reflection and prayer.  From the great cities of Europe to the simplest of rural American villages spontaneous celebrations erupted in the streets.

  

These Doughboys may never have made it to the Front, but had plenty to celebrate in an impromptu New York City parade celebrating the Armistice on November 11, 1918. 

By the time of the first anniversary most Allied nations had officially adopted November 11 as a holiday.  In Britain, Canada, and other Commonwealth Countries it is called Remembrance Day or Poppy Day for the red paper flowers almost universally worn then. In the United States, where holiday proclamations were traditionally left to the states, only a handful had yet designated a formal holiday.  But with troops only recently come home, cities and towns across the country marked the day with parades and speeches.

  

Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. issued the call for the Paris Caucus where Officers and enlisted men still in France in May 1919 laid the groundwork for the establishment of the American Legion.

The spread of the day as an official holiday was promoted by veterans’ organizations.  One such organization was envisioned by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. as a group analogous to the Grand Army of the Republic, the organization of Civil War Veterans which dominated American public life for more than 50 years.  Within days of the Armistice Roosevelt gathered officers in Paris to plan for the organization.  In March 1919 the Paris Caucus of over 1000 officers and enlisted men adopted a temporary constitution and the name American Legion.  Congress granted the Legion a charter in September and a founding convention was held in Minneapolis, Minnesota over three days that coincided with the 1919 Armistice celebrations.

Unlike the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), an existing organization of Spanish Civil War, Philippine Insurrection, Boxer Rebellion, and Mexican Expeditionary veterans which began accepting Great War veterans into their existing network of Posts, the American Legion had a distinct ideological tone.  From the beginning, its leadership was in ultra-conservative hands, and some were eager to mobilize the ranks in campaigns against the perceived Red Menace of the post war period.  Legion officers often encouraged their members to act as organized strike breakers.

On that same Armistice Day in 1919, an American Legion parade in Centralia, Washington, the heart of lumber country and long running labor strife, broke ranks on a pre-arranged signal and attacked the local hall of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). 

 

The American  Legion  in Centralia, Washington parading on Armistice Day 1919 moments before they  broke ranks to attack the IWW Hall. 

Wobblies in the hall opened fire in self defense as the Legionaries tried to charge up the stairs.  Four Legionaries were killed in the attack and several others were wounded inside the hall in a confusing melee before most of the union men were disarmed.  Wesley Everest, himself a veteran and in uniform, escaped although wounded and was chased down to the river where he shot two or more of his pursuers before being overwhelmed.   

That night a mob of Legionaries, with the complicity of authorities, seized the wounded Everest from his jail cell, dragged him behind an automobile, castrated him, and hung him from a railroad bridge.  Several IWW members including those captured in the hall and others tracked down by possies in a massive man hunt were put on trial.  Eight Wobblies were convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to long prison terms.  No Legionnaires were charged in the initial assault.

 

President Warren G. Harding, standing left at the entombment of the Unknown Soldier on Armistice Day 1921.  He also proclaimed a one-time Federal Holiday for the occasion. 

When the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was dedicated on Armistice Day 1921, a onetime Federal Holiday was declared.  In 1926 a Congressional Resolution proclaimed the “recurring anniversary of should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations” and that the President should issue an annual proclamation calling for the observance of Armistice Day.  It still fell short of the declaration of a Federal holiday.  At the time 27 states had official observances.  Spread of the holiday, although popular with the public, was strongly opposed by business interests.

Although the rival veterans’ organizations both campaigned for the establishment of Armistice Day as an official Holliday and supported wounded veterans, their emphasis, and political agenda, was clearly different.  The VFW was more interested in obtaining benefits and support for veterans while the Legion promoted respect for the military and patriotism.  The VFW spearheaded the campaigns that resulted in the first Veteran medical benefits, vocational training for wounded veterans, the establishment of the Veteran’s Bureau, and an act of Congress to pay Great War veterans a Bonus in 1942. 

When the Depression hit veterans especially hard, the VFW endorsed efforts to get Congress to authorize an early payment of the promised Bonus.  Although not officially supporters of the Bonus March on Washington in 1932, they were outraged when troops under General Douglas MacArthur violently dispersed the demonstrators and destroyed their camp.  The Legion, on the other hand, supported the Army and painted the Bonus Marchers as Communists.

 

Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, twice a Medal of Honor winner, was recruited by business leaders and high American Legion officials to be the "Man on a White Horse" to front a coup d'etat overthrowing Franklin Roosevelt in 1933.  Instead, he exposed the plot to Congress. 

In the early days of the Franklin Roosevelt administration some Legion leaders were involved in the aborted plot to stage a military coup against the President and replace him with a military Man on a White Horse.  They planned to use legion members as Italian Fascists and German Nazis had used their Black and Brown Shirts, largely drawn from the ranks of their own veterans.  The plot was exposed when an officer who was offered the titular role military savior, Marine Corps General Smedley Butler publicly exposed the cabal.  The plot was averted but its leaders were so powerful that none were ever charged or tried for treason.  

Finally, the issue was settled when on June 4, 1954 with a whole new crop of veterans from the Korean War already coming home, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Act of Congress that transformed Armistice Day into Veterans Day.

 

After signing legislation creating the official new Federal Veteran's Day holiday, President Dwight D. Eisenhower posed with leaders of the American Legion, left, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, right. Representative Edwin Rees of Kansas, the sponsor of  the legislation is to the immediate left of Ike. 

Traditionalists still grumbled.  But they were really given something to complain about in 1968 when Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill, which sought to ensure three-day weekends for Federal employees and to encourage tourism and travel by celebrating four national holidays, Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Columbus Day on Mondays.  Federal Veterans Day was moved to the last Monday in October.  When the first observance under the new scheme was held on October 21, 1971 the public was outraged and most states refused to go along, maintaining November 11 as state holidays.  In many states that meant two observances—and competing claims for paid holidays by workers in private industry covered by labor contracts.  Businesses hated that. 

Bowing to public pressure, President Gerald Ford signed a new law returning the observation of Veterans Day to November 11 beginning in 1978. If November 11 falls on a Saturday or Sunday, the Federal government observes the holiday on the previous Friday or following Monday.

In recent years mid-week observance of Veterans Day has lowered its public profile.  Fewer and fewer cities and towns held Veterans Day parades.  Participation in local commemorations faded as first the World War I veterans passed and then the ranks of World War II and Korean Veterans shrank.  Veterans of the unpopular Vietnam War often felt unwelcome in Legion and VFW posts and were stigmatized by the public as troubled and possibly dangerous.

Veterans organizations became outraged as a wide-spread movement to keep kids in school resulted in Veterans Day being dropped as a school holiday in many places.  Ironically, with schools in session and many state legislatures mandating veteran curricula on that day, the holiday may have gotten a boost in interest among students who previously would have just enjoyed a day away from studies.

Traditionalists still grumbled.  But they were really given something to complain about in 1968 when Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill, which sought to ensure three-day weekends for Federal employees and to encourage tourism and travel by celebrating four national holidays, Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Columbus Day on Mondays.  Federal Veterans Day was moved to the last Monday in October.  When the first observance under the new scheme was held on October 21, 1971 the public was outraged and most states refused to go along, maintaining November 11 as state holidays.  In many states that meant two observances—and competing claims for paid holidays by workers in private industry covered by labor contracts.  Businesses hated that. 

 

Younger Vets have replaced aging World War II, Korean, and Vietnam vets in parades like this pre-pandemic one in New York City.   

The long, lingering wars in Iraq and Afghanistan produced new rounds of veterans, many of them National Guardsmen and Reservists, older soldiers with deep roots in their home communities.  They are giving the day new meaning.

 

Donald Trump finally got his cherished military parade in Washington not on Veterans Day, but on his own birthday.  Crowds were sparse and dwarfed by nation-wide No Kings protests nation wide.  

Unfortunately, that determination was ignored by Donald Trump who famously yearned to stage an epic military parade including tanks and missiles to roll by a reviewing stand like observances in France—and Russia.  That wild dream was hosed down by the almost unanimous opposition of military leaders, technical difficulties, and the enormous expense.  In his second Term Trump finally got his parade not on Veterans Day but conveniently on his birthday.  It turned out to be a spectacular and embarrassing failure.

 

For Wobblies and the Labor Movement It’s In November We Remember

Ralph Chaplin, then the editor of the Industrial Worker, wrote this poem, later set to music.  Pictured is Frank Little, the tough IWW hard rock miners organizer who was lynched in Butte, Montana in 1917.

For many of us November is a melancholy month.  Often slate gray skies silhouette naked trees in a chilling wind.  Death seems at hand.  But so is its handmaiden—remembrance.  After all, the month begins with All Souls/Day of the Dead when the memories of ancestors and loved ones are honored. 

English school children still chant “Remember, Remember the Fifth of November,” now a harmless nursery rhyme about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot but was once an annual call to riot and mayhem against Catholics not only in Britain but in pre-Revolutionary War New England.  Here in the American Midwest, we are often reminded of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Great Lakes iron ore freighter that sank with all hands in a gale on Lake Superior on November 10, 1975 and is commemorated in Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting ballad.  On November 11 Americans celebrate Veterans Day on the anniversary of the Armistice that ended the First World War.  But in Britain and most Commonwealth nations it is a somber Remembrance Day, more akin to our Memorial Day in honoring war dead.

This 2015 cover of the Industrial Worker was in the continuing tradition "In November We Remember" issues.

But the month carries special meaning to the American labor movement.  Beginning in the early 1920’s the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) began annually commemorating a string of radical and union martyrs under the heading In November We Remember!  Aside from articles in the union press—the Industrial Pioneer and the Industrial Worker—and often local programs and memorials, the month was used to raise funds for the General Defense Committee for the legal defense of persecuted unionists and aid for class war prisoners.

Most often cited in annual observances were the following cases, each with a unique and tragic story.  In each case I will link to a blog post with a full story.

The execution of the Haymarket Martyrs in 1887.

The Haymarket Martyrs—On November 11, 1887 four of the original eight anarchists and unionists charged with murder after a bomb exploded killing several attacking police at a protest rally at Haymarket Square in Chicago on May 4, 1886.  Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel were hung at Cook County Jail.  A fifth defendant, Louis Ling, had committed suicide in jail to deprive the state from executing him.  Their death galvanized the international labor movement and led directly to the establishment of May Day as International Labor Day.

A union funeral for three of the victims of the Everett Massacre.

The Everett Massacre—The IWW lost at least 5 dead and 27 injured when Sheriff's deputies and timber industry gun thugs opened fire on the Verona and another boat bringing Seattle Wobblies to Everett, Washington for a free speech fight on November 5, 1916.  About half a dozen other Wobs were missing and presumed drowned after jumping from the ambushed boat to evade the lethal crossfire from shore.  

A memorial marker recently erected by Wobblies and labor history devotees to Wesley Everest, the World War I vet lynched in his doughboy uniform after the Centralia, Washington IWW Hall was attacked by American Legionnaires

The Centralia Massacre—See my Armistice/Veterans Day post. On November 1l, 1919 Westley Everest, an IWW member and veteran in uniform, was lynched following an attack on the IWW hall in Centralia, Washington by members of a lumbermen’s Citizen Committee and American Legionnaires.

Joe Hill—Legendary IWW songwriter and footloose agitator Joe Hill (a/k/a Joel Haglund and Joseph Hillstrom) was executed by firing squad in Utah for a murder he could not have committed on this date in 1915.  Many of his songs continue to be printed in new editions of the IWW’s Little Red Song Book and he helped establish a tradition of labor music inherited by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, and Si Kahn and others.  He may be best known to the public for I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night, a song by Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson famously recorded by Paul Robeson and Joan Baez.

Mother Jones celebrated her birthday on May 1, 1930 a few month before she died.

Mother Jones—Although not a martyr and directly related to the IWW only through her attendance at its 1905 founding convention, Mary Harris Jones, the miners’ angel, is often included in later versions of this litany.  She died on November 30, 1930 well into her 90’s after more than forty years of tireless activism and hell raising.

Both the IWW and the labor movement also use this month to remember the countless others who have given their lives during the years of more or less open class warfare in the United States and down to this day.

For instance D.J. Alperovitz as part of his massive IWW archive project at the University of Washington has documented the deaths of more than 170 individual associated with the union from its founding to the 1970’s in the file IWW Members Killed Year by Year.  The list includes some bystanders killed when police, militia, or gun thugs shot at strikers and picketers, the unborn babies of women who miscarried due to violence, members who died in jail often after abuse, and some who were killed in fights or while allegedly committing crimes that may or may not have been related to their membership.

Student and journalist Frank  Terrugi is one of the most recent IWW deaths recorded in D.J. Alperovitz's file IWW Members Killed Year by Year.  He was "went missing" and was executed along with tens of thousands of others after the 1973 Chilean Coup.  His case was among the inspirations for the film Missing starring Jack Lemon and Sissy Spacek.

Among the earliest listed are several members killed in the IWW’s 1909 Press Steel Car Strike in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania.  Seven members were gunned down and murdered in the Columbine Massacre in 1924 in Colorado when the state Militia opened fire with machine guns on a camp of coal strikers and their families.  Several other strikes had multiple fatalities.  The list also includes Wobs who died in the Baja Rebellion of 1913, Mexican Revolution, in the Soviet Union during and after the Russian Civil War, and while fighting as volunteers in the Spanish Civil War.  The last two listed were student, journalist Frank Terrugi, an IWW member killed in the 1973 Chilean Coup whose story was an inspiration for the film   Missing with Jack Lemon and Sissy Spacek and journalist Frank Gould who disappeared in 1974 while covering the Moro Rebellion in the Philippines.

A WPA mural depicting the Memorial Day Massacre in Chicago.

Of course, we should remember the labor dead beyond the IWW.  A far from comprehensive list would include those killed in the Great Railway Strike of 1877, decades of mine wars in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, and Colorado including the Battle of Blair Mountain, the 1919 Steel Strike, and the 1937 Memorial Day Massacre in Chicago.

So much to remember….