I was a caregiver
for my mother and one of her most vivid memories was the end of the Great War,
which, of course, was what they called World War I. The war ended with an
armistice that was to take effect at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th
month in 1918.
Mother was 7 years
old and attending public school in Chicago. The boys wore paper hats to be soldiers.
The girls wore white rags made from an old bed sheet tied around their foreheads.
A red cross in the center of the headbands, made with iodine, completed their nurse
costumes. The children all paraded around the flagpole in the playground that
morning of November 11, 1918. Armistice Day, or as we call it, Veterans Day.
