This day, although now officially Veterans' Day, will always be Armistice Day to me, and will always evoke the horrible sacrifices of the Great War. France lost more men at the battle of Verdun in 1916 than the U.S. has lost in all her wars. The  statue above is a memorial at Verdun to the 714,000 French and German casualties there. Let's try to remember them for a little longer than a nanosecond, shall we?

And what was the point of their sacrifice? To erase an entire generation from France, leaving her vulnerable to the next German generation, bent on avenging defeats like Verdun? Sadly, like so much, it seems utterly pointless.