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Veterans Day started off as “Armistice Day” in 1919, to celebrate the anniversary of the end of World War I.
Instead of giving World War I veterans the long term financial and medical help they needed, we gave them a "Day" of cold comfort.
What was going? The short story is that America was still reeling from the tremendous cost of providing US Civil War benefits to veterans of that war, which had occurred some 53 years earlier.
From the American Legion magazine comes this sad, but true, story.:
“The cost of Civil War veterans benefits did not peak until 1913, Ridgway [James Ridgway, chief counsel for policy and procedure at the Board of Veterans' Appeal] said, four years before American troops fought World War I in France. At that time, veterans benefits accounted for about one-third of the federal budget. “This is typical. If you look at the patterns of conflict after conflict, benefits payments peak 50 years after. So when you’re thinking about veterans benefits, you’ve got to be thinking for the long term as a policymaker.”
The American public became concerned over the cost of veterans benefits and started to oppose them, Ridgway said, “and World War I veterans bore the brunt of that attitude.” The war created 4.7 million veterans and many suffered back on the home front.
“Suicide, homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction – these things all kept happening,” Ridgway said, “and we did not take care of the returning veterans after World War I because there was so much backlash against what had been paid out to the Civil War veterans. But the veterans had these real needs, and it led to the organization of the veterans service organizations that we know of today.”
The American Legion was founded in 1919 by World War I veterans. One of its main concerns, Ridgway said, was the hospital system for veterans, completely overwhelmed by those returning from France. “So in 1921, The American Legion helped issue a report that publicized the fact that shell-shocked veterans were being sent to hospitals for feeble-minded children because there was no other space elsewhere, and they were forced to sit on infant chairs.
In other news, Trumps new acting attorney general was involved in firm that scammed veterans out of their life savings. Happy Veteran's Day!
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