Eleventh Hour Ritual

" The following correspondence was emailed to me by our present Commander Robert E. Dishman concerning Veterans Day"

My Comrades, it is now the eleventh hour.  This pause is to remind us that the hour of eleven has a tender significance to all members of The American Legion.  It was on the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour that the guns of World War One ceased firing and silence encompassed the earth.  It was at eleven that a delirium of joy and thanksgiving swept over humanity.  It was at eleven that the last man died in battle.  It was then that the soul of The American Legion was born.  It was then that our obligation to our country and to her honored dead was conceived.  World War Two has been fought, and with the cessation of hostilities in Korea and Vietnam, and subsequent places, our honored dead lie in many foreign battlefields.  Shall we in our jubilation of peace forget our comrades?

Let us now, in this moment of silence, renew our pledge that these dead shall not have died in vain; and that the maimed, the widowed and the orphaned, shall receive whatever comfort and recompense a grateful nation can bestow.

And let us again reverently resolve to consecrate our comradeship by our devotion to mutual helpfulness. Let us stand in silence for 30 seconds.