April 28, 1921. Jury Acquits Defendants on the Columbus Raid

Jury Acquits 16 Mexicans of Columbus Raid Murders

So read the headlines of the New York Times on this day in 1921.

This is an aspect of the raid, which started off the day by day habit here, i.e., posts in "real time", a century removed, that we still haven't broken.  We probably should have considered it before.

Villa declared the raid a success in that his forces took over 300 longarms, 80 horses, and 30 mules, from Columbus and Camp Furlong by way of the raid.  While that may be so, he directly lost 90 to 170 dead, thereby paying a steep price for low returns it its considered that the raiding force had been made up of 484 men.  Sixty-three of his men were killed during the raid and the remainder died of their wounds thereafter, explaining the imprecise tally.

Some were captured and tried rapidly, with six being sentenced to death.

Other captured men, however were tried later on with differing result, but the overall results are, unfortunately, quite unclear to me.  It hadn't occurred to me that any were tried at all, as I would have regarded Villa's army as that, an army, albeit an irregular one.  Prisoners from armies aren't tried and aren't executed for simply participating in a military action, irrespective of the action itself being illegal.

Indeed, that logic later caused at least one prisoner to have a death sentence commuted to a life sentence. But there were at least three trials and many of the men tried were those who had been taken prisoner by the Army following the launching of its expedition into Mexico.  As far as I can tell, some death sentences were carried out.  A shocking number of the prisoners simply died in captivity due to the horrible condition, in part, of the county jail in which they were held.  We have to recall here that the 1918 Flu Epidemic was ongoing.  

As things moved along there came to be a fair amount of sympathy for the prisoners, some of whom  were in bad physical shape, and many of whom had only vague connections with what had occurred.  Soldier witnesses for the trial ended up being deployed to France so conducting the trials became difficult.  One defendant was only twelve years old and was released.  

Other than the citation to this headline, I can't find any evidence of trials occurring as late as 1921, but apparently they did.  By this time, it was probably too late to really convict many.  In this trial, apparently there were twenty defendants, and sixteen were found not guilty by the jury.

Should any have been tried at all?

Well, some appear to have been tried because of direct murders of civilians, something that's illegal in any war.  That's another matter. But the wisdom of trying soldiers, at least one of whom was a conscripted Carranzaista who was sent into action on that day without ammunition, is and was questionable.  What to do with them no doubt was also problematic, something we've learned again in recent years due to our wars with the Taliban and Al Queda.

On this same day President Harding, who seems to have been photographed with visitors nearly every day, posed with Pop Anson and Anson's daughters.  Adrian "Pop" Anson had been a professional baseball player and later a vaudeville performer.  In his vaudeville role, he performed with his two daughters depicted here, Adele and Dorothy.  Anson would have been about 68 at the time this photograph was taken, and both of his daughters were in their 30s.  Anson died the following April at age 69.

The dog was Laddie Boy, an Airedale.  He was the first White House dog to be followed by the press.  He wasn't even one year old when photographed here, and would outlive his master.

Lives of The Downtrodden in Early America

Today In Wyoming's History: Reviewing the Wounded Knee Medals of Honor.

Today In Wyoming's History: Reviewing the Wounded Knee Medals of Honor.: 

Reviewing the Wounded Knee Medals of Honor.

Sgt. Toy receiving the Medal of Honor in 1891.  Sgt. Toy was cited for "bravery while shooting Indians" at Wounded Knee.  He is known to have shot two during the engagement, which is about all that his citations and the supporting material relates.

 Tribes Want Medals Awarded for Wounded Knee Revoked.

While this isn't a Wyoming item per se, the Battle of Wounded Knee has been noted here before, as its a regional one.

It would likely surprise most readers here that twenty Medals of Honor were awarded to soldiers who participated in the actions at Wounded Knee.  The odd thing is that I was under the impression that the Army had rescinded these medals long ago, and I'm not completely certain that they haven't.  Having said that, I can't find that they were, so my presumption must have been in error.

To put this in context, the medals that were rescinded, if any were, weren't rescinded because Wounded Knee was a massacre.  They were rescinded because they didn't meet the post April 1917 criteria for receiving the award.

The Medal of Honor was first authorized in 1861 by the Navy, not the Army, following the retirement of Gen. Winfield Scott, who was adamantly opposed to the awarding of medals to servicemen, which he regarded as a European practice, not an American one.  The award was authorized by Congress that year, at the Navy's request.  The Army followed in 1862 in the same fashion.  The medals actually vary by appearance, to this day, depending upon which service issues them, and they've varied somewhat in design over time.

During the Civil War the award was generally issued for extraordinary heroism, but not necessarily of the same degree for which it is today.  Because of this, a fairly large number of Medals of Honor were conferred after the Civil War to servicemen who retroactively sought them, so awards continued for Civil War service for decades following the war.  New awards were also issued, of course, for acts of heroism in the remaining decades of the 19th Century, with Army awards usually being related to service in the Indian Wars.  Navy awards, in contrast, tended to be issued for heroic acts in lifesaving, a non combat issuance of the award that could not occur today.  Indeed, a fairly large number were issued to sailors who went over the sides of ships to save the lives, or attempt to, of drowning individuals, often with tragic results to the sailors.

At any rate, the period following the war and the method by which it was retroactively issued may have acclimated the Army to issuing awards as there are a surprising number of them that were issued for frontier battles.  This does not mean that there were not genuine acts of heroism that took place in those battles, it's just surprising how many there were and its clear that the criteria was substantially lower than that which would apply for most of the 20th Century.

Indeed, in the 20th Century the Army began to significantly tighten up requirements to hold the medal. This came into full fruition during World War One during which the Army made it plain that it was only a combat medal, while the Navy continued to issue the medal for peacetime heroism.  In 1917 the Army took the position that the medal could only be issued for combat acts of heroism at the risk of life to the recipient, and in 1918 that change became official.  Prior to the 1918 change the Army commissioned a review board on past issuance of the medal and struck 911 instances of them having been issued.  I'd thought the Wounded Knee medals had been stricken, but my presumption must be in error.

Frontier era Medals of Honor, as well as those issued to Civil War era soldiers after the Civil War, tend to be remarkably lacking in information as to why they were conferred.  This has presented a problem for the Army looking back on them in general.

Indeed, the Wounded Knee medals have this character.  They don't say much, and what they do say isn't all that useful to really know much about what lead them to be awarded.  There is a peculiar aspect to them, however, in that they don't reflect what we generally know about the battle historically.  

Wikipedia has summarized the twenty awards and what they were awarded for, and this illustrates this problem.  The Wounded Knee Wikipedia page summarizes this as follows

·         Sergeant William Austin, cavalry, directed fire at Indians in ravine at Wounded Knee;

·         Private Mosheim Feaster, cavalry, extraordinary gallantry at Wounded Knee;

·         Private Mathew Hamilton, cavalry, bravery in action at Wounded Knee;

·         Private Joshua Hartzog, artillery, rescuing commanding officer who was wounded and carried him out of range of hostile guns at Wounded Knee;

·         Private Marvin Hillock, cavalry, distinguished bravery at Wounded Knee;

·         Sergeant Bernhard Jetter, cavalry, distinguished bravery at Wounded Knee for "killing an Indian who was in the act of killing a wounded man of B Troop."

·         Sergeant George Loyd, cavalry, bravery, especially after having been severely wounded through the lung at Wounded Knee;

·         Sergeant Albert McMillain, cavalry, while engaged with Indians concealed in a ravine, he assisted the men on the skirmish line, directed their fire, encouraged them by example, and used every effort to dislodge the enemy at Wounded Knee;

·         Private Thomas Sullivan, cavalry, conspicuous bravery in action against Indians concealed in a ravine at Wounded Knee;

·         First Sergeant Jacob Trautman, cavalry, killed a hostile Indian at close quarters, and, although entitled to retirement from service, remained to close of the campaign at Wounded Knee;

·         Sergeant James Ward, cavalry, continued to fight after being severely wounded at Wounded Knee;

·         Corporal William Wilson, cavalry, bravery in Sioux Campaign, 1890;

·         Private Hermann Ziegner, cavalry, conspicuous bravery at Wounded Knee;

·         Musician John Clancy, artillery, twice voluntarily rescued wounded comrades under fire of the enemy;

·         Lieutenant Ernest Garlington, cavalry, distinguished gallantry;

·         First Lieutenant John Chowning Gresham, cavalry, voluntarily led a party into a ravine to dislodge Sioux Indians concealed therein. He was wounded during this action.

·         Second Lieutenant Harry Hawthorne, artillery, distinguished conduct in battle with hostile Indians;

·         Private George Hobday, cavalry, conspicuous and gallant conduct in battle;

·         First Sergeant Frederick Toy, cavalry, bravery;

·         Corporal Paul Weinert, artillery, taking the place of his commanding officer who had fallen severely wounded, he gallantly served his piece, after each fire advancing it to a better position

For quite a few of these, we're left without a clue as to what the basis of the award was, at least based on this summation. But for some, it would suggest a pitched real battle.  A couple of the awards are for rescuing wounded comrades under fire.  Others are for combat actions that we can recognize.

Indeed, one historian that I know, and probably only because I know him, has noted the citations in support for "it was a real battle", taking the controversial, albeit private, position that Wounded Knee was a real, pitched, engagement, not simply a slaughter.  This isn't the popular view at all, of course, and its frankly not all that well supported by the evidence either.  But what of that evidence.

A popular thesis that's sometimes presented is that Wounded Knee was the 7th Cavalry's revenge for the Battle of the Little Big Horn.  Perhaps this is so, but if it is so, it's would be somewhat odd in that it would presume an institutional desire for revenge rather than a personal one, for the most part.  Wounded Knee was twenty four years after Little Big Horn and most of the men who had served at Little Big Horn were long since out of the service.  Indeed, some of the men who received awards would have been two young for service in 1890, and while I haven't looked up all of their biographies, some of them were not likely to have even been born at the time.  Maybe revenge was it, but if that's the case, it would demonstrate a 19th Century retention of institutional memories that vastly exceed the 20th and 21st Century ones.  Of course, the 7th Cavalry remains famous to this day for Little Big Horn, so perhaps that indeed is it.

Or perhaps what it reflects is that things went badly wrong at Wounded Knee and the massacre became a massively one sided battle featuring a slaughter, something that the Sioux on location would have been well within their rights to engage in. That is, once the things went wrong and the Army overreacted, as it certainly is well established that it did, the Sioux with recourse to arms would have been justified in acting in self defense.  That there were some actions in self defense which would have had the character of combat doesn't mean it wasn't combat.

And that raises the sticky moral issues of the Congressional efforts to rescind the medals.  Some of these medals are so poorly supported that the Army could likely simply rescind them on their own, as they have many others, and indeed, I thought they had.  Some seem quite unlikely to meet the modern criteria for the medal no matter what, and therefore under the practices established in 1917, they could be rescinded even if they were regarded as heroic at the time.  Cpl. Weinert's for example, unless there was more to it, would probably just merit a letter of commendation today.

Indeed, save for two examples that reference rescuing wounded comrades, I don't know that any of these would meet the modern criteria. They don't appear to.  So once again, most of these would appear to be subject to proper unilateral Army downgrading or rescission all on their own with no Congressional action.

But what of Congressional action, which has been proposed. The Army hasn't rescinded these awards and they certainly stand out as awards that should receive attention.  If Congress is to act, the best act likely would be to require the Army to review overall its pre 1917 awards once again.  If over 900 were weeded out the first time, at least a few would be today, and I suspect all of these would.

To simply rescind them, however, is problematic, as it will tend to be based neither on the criteria for award today, or the criteria of the award in 1890, but on the gigantic moral problem that is the Battle of Wounded Knee itself.  That is, these awards are proposed to be removed as we regard Wounded Knee as a genocidal act over all, which it does indeed appear to be.

The problem with that is that even if it is a genocidal act in chief, individual acts during it may or may not be. So, rushing forwards to rescue a wounded comrade might truly be heroic, even if done in the middle of an act of barbarism.  Other acts, such as simply shooting somebody, would seem to be participating in that barbarism, but here too you still have the situation of individual soldiers suddenly committed to action and not, in every instance, knowing what is going on.  It's now too late to know in most cases.  Were they acting like William Calley or just as a regular confused soldier?

Indeed, if medals can be stricken because we now abhor what they were fighting for (and in regard to Wounded Knee, it was questioned nearly immediately, which may be why the Army felt compelled to issue medals to those participating in it, to suggest it was a battle more than it was), what do we do with other problematic wars?

Eighty six men, for example, received the Medal of Honor for the Philippine Insurrection.  In retrospect, that was a pure colonial war we'd not condone in any fashion today, and it was controversial at the time.  Theodore Roosevelt very belatedly received the Medal of Honor for leading the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry up Kettle Hill during the Spanish American War, and he no doubt met the modern criterial, but the Spanish American War itself is morally dubious at best.  

Of course, none of these awards are associated with an act of genocide, which takes us back to Wounded Knee.  As noted above, maybe so many awards were issued there as the Army wanted to to convert a massacre into a battle, and conferring awards for bravery was a way to attempt to do that.

Certainly the number of awards for Wounded Knee is very outsized.  It's been noted that as many awards have been issued for heroism at Wounded Knee as have been for some gigantic Civil War battles.  Was the Army really more heroic at Wounded Knee than Antietam?  That seems unlikely.

Anyway a person looks at it, this is one of those topics that it seems clear would be best served by Army action.  The Army has looked at the topic of pre 1917 awards before, and it removed a fair number of them.  There's no reason that it can't do so again. It was regarded as harsh the last time it occurred, and some will complain now as well, but the Army simply did it last time.   That would honor the medal and acknowledge the history, and it really shouldn't be confined to just Wounded Knee.

Dead men and horses at Wounded Knee following the conflict.

April 27, 1941. Greece Falls

 

German propaganda poster issued on this day in 1941. The text, which is oddly in the German script more or less reads "The gigantic work of our Furher's in the struggle of the war is the highest and best duty of all Germans to support."^[1]

On this day in 1941, the Germans took Athens and the Greek government surrendered.

Today in World War II History—April 27, 1941

Almost 1,000 men died in British naval evacuations on this day when the ships carrying the evacuated troops were sunk in Luftwaffe raids. The event is known as the Salmat Disaster.

Churchill delivered a radio address:

Westward Look, the Land is Bright (Audio) - International Churchill Society: April 27, 1941. Broadcast, London. http://ia800205.us.archive.org/19/items/Winston_Churchill/1941-04-27_BBC_Winston_Churchill_Westward_Look_The_Land_Is_Bright.mp3 Related Story

All in all, obviously, it was a bad day for the Allies in what had been a bad month.

Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but relating these events now, what do they say about the actual state of the forces?  We know, of course, how the story ends, but even then there were certain things that seem evident, if considered.

One is, and the one the Germans were obviously focused on, that the Germans were pretty much the top contenders in ground combat at the time.  They'd now defeated all of the continental European powers they'd fought and had pushed the British off of the continent twice. And at the moment, they were besting the British in North Africa.

Having said that, and it wasn't quite evident yet, that strength waned considerably once they were removed from the continent, and the opposite was the case for the British. The British were retreating in North Africa in the face of the modern new opponent, the Afrika Corps, but they weren't defeated and hadn't been pushed out of Tobruk.

Moreover, the British, with naval power the Germans couldn't match, were capable of landing troops wherever they wished, and whenever they wished.  They'd commenced naval based raids and had conducted them on German held Norway, in North Africa, and on the Italian peninsula.  This meant that the Axis, which had a massive coastline, was really incapable of defending it against such raids but it had to try. The British, for their part, were not really subject to them due to their superior naval strength.

Additionally, the Italians had proven completely incompetent in the war.  This is something that is well known, and the reasons for it are debated by historians, but it was a fact. Without German direct support the Italian military was completely useless.  Indeed much of its more "modern" equipment was now obsolete, having peaked its point of being cutting edge in the mid 1930s prior to the onset of the war.  In the rapidly developing armor and aircraft industries of the time, that meant that their equipment was old and past its prime.

This in turn meant that for the most part the Italian army was of no real aid to the German war effort other than that it simply existed.  Indeed, Italy had caused the Germans to commit men to North Africa and to an effort in Greece which caused it to have to invade Yugoslavia.  The German Army, in 1939-1941, was the best on the ground in Europe, but it was spread pretty thin.

All of this sets the background, of course, for what was coming. But what was, was this.  Germany could go where it wanted and when it wanted on the European landmass. . . against conventionally sized European states.  It couldn't, however, knock the United Kingdom out of the war, and the UK could strike the Axis coast anywhere it wanted at any time.  Germany was committed to an air campaign against the UK but it wasn't denting British resolve and it wasn't really impacting British production much.  The British, in turn, could and did hit Germany fairly frequently in bombing raids conducted at night, which also weren't denting German resolve and which weren't really impacting German production much, but which should have been a red flat to the Germans that in spite of their ability to occupy the European landmass they weren't even remotely close to defeating the British and whatever they might wish to do next, the British remained a power capable of really harassing them, at a bare minimum, and one that needed to be constantly guarded against.

And, in the background, the United States was openly edging closer to war every day with the Roosevelt Administration openly backing the British and coming as close to bringing the country into the war without openly asking for a declaration of war.  The German Navy's "Happy Time" had ended and now the production scale was tipping towards the British.

Not obvious yet, with the occupation of Yugoslavia and Greece the Germans now would, additionally, have to maintain a fighting garrison as those countries would soon be the seen of guerilla warfare.

With all of this in mind, the Germans looked east towards the Soviet Union, which had started a rolling slow mobilization earlier that week.  Hitler and his lieutenants calculated, perhaps rationally, that German land forces had been invulnerable to date and they would be again.  But they discounted, and rather seriously, that their rear was completely exposed from the air and sea, they hadn't been able to really absorb what they'd taken to date, and with every miles they gained anywhere, they were spread that much thinner with no real source of additional manpower to supply them with replacements other than from Germany itself.

Footnote:

1.  This is one of those odd texts that doesn't translate directly from one language to another, so it can be translated more than one way.

Monday Morning Repeats. From the Week of June 11, 2011. Communications and Road Miles

This entry was actually the only post for June, 1911.  This blog used to have big intervals between publication.

Communications and Road Miles

April 25, 1941 Echoes of wars past.

On this day in 1941, the Afrika Corps took Halfaya Pass between Egypt and Libya and entered Egypt from the west.  Given the dire situation, the British withdrew its Hurricanes from Tobruk, although they were down to two there at the time.  This left only Westland Lysanders stationed there for artillery spotting purposes.

Westland Lysanders over Madagascar in 1942.

The move conceded control of the skies to the Luftwaffe over Tobruk.

On the same day, Arab recruits to the British forces paraded in Jerusalem.

 

In spite of manpower shortages, and in spite of the fact that Arab volunteers were forthcoming, the British made very little use of them.  It made some, but not much.  All in all, there seems to have been an element of lingering mistrust of Arab volunteers and forces in spite of the significant cooperation between the Hashemites, now ruling Transjordan (and recently overthrown, albeit temporarily, in Iraq), during World War One.  This was partially amplified by Arab unrest between the wars.

On this day, the British forces were defeated at Thermopylae.  

Be that as it may, however, the British defense there did amount none the less to a strategic victory given as the delaying action gave the British forces now withdrawing from Greece much needed time.  The British forces made a 100 miles strategic withdrawal in twelve hours, a remarkable feat, and were greeted with flowers by crowds in Athens.

Many of the troops in Greece were New Zealand, so here again we'll not a bit of an irony in that on this day the British in the Middle East were observing ANZAC Day.

Australian troops at Anzac Monument in front of cemetery, April 25, 1941.

Regarding German intervention in Greece a complete success, Hitler ordered, on this day, the invasion of Crete.

In a press conference, President Roosevelt compared Charles Lindbergh's position on the war to that of the Copperheads to the Civil War.

Blog Mirror. Grocery prices, April 25, 1971.

 

1971 Grocery Prices

April 25, 1921. Famous visitors

Elsa Einstein, Albert Einstein, and President Harding.  Elsa and Albert Einstein were fairly newly married at this time, having been married in 1919 following Albert's divorce from his first wife.  They were not only related by marriage, but by blood, as their mothers were sisters and their father's first cousins, a circumstances that would have prohibited their marriage in most, if not all, US states.

On this day in 1921, Albert Einstein and his wife Elsa visited President Harding.  Einstein was suddenly famous following the fairly recent eclipse which went to support his general theory of relativity.

The Japanese government voted against a resolution to allow women to participate in political parties.

Communist in Fiume staged a coup after losing an election there.

The Allied Reparations Commission demanded that Germany pay 1,000,000 Marks in gold to France by April 30.

Nebraska prohibited anyone who was not a U.S. citizen or resident alien from owning property in the state.

A city in Maryland should not get to be its own state.

Not everything the founders did makes sense now, and one of those things is Washington D.C.

Not the city party.  You need a seat of government and that's going to be a big city.

No, the "District of Columbia" part.

Look, I get the reasons for it.  It was a really big country when it was founded and the founders were worried about boosting the power of a state that housed the national government.  Okay, made sense at the time, although it was probably a little paranoid frankly.  Does it make sense now?

Not so much.

The idea, of course, is that a reservation of Federal land is by nature a Federal Reservation, and Washington D.C. is sort of a super reservation.  Originally, the founders thought of Federal power applying to a very limited number of things it was reserving to itself.  Forts, some port facilities, things like that.

Well, that didn't work out and there's a lot more than just that, and that's fine, but the capital of the country doesn't need to be a super reservation that's separate from the state its in, which is Maryland.  And making it a state is just moronic.

The argument is that it has a lot of people and no representation.  Well, it does have a lot of people, around 700,000, but making it a state would not only defeat the original purpose of making it a Federal reservation, it'd actually go exactly the opposite way, making a city that exists on nothing other than Federal largess a state.  

Washington D.C., as a state, would have interests obviously completely separate from the rest of the country's on everything, that one interest being the interest of the government itself.  Big infrastructure bill, they'd be for it every time.  Create a Bureau of Tabbies and Norwegian Forest Cats?  They'd be for that too.  Whatever it is, as long as it was the Federal government, they'd be game. That's the town's only product.

Warren Air Force Base is a Federal Reservation in Wyoming and people who live there get to vote in the state's elections. Why? It's in the state.

Ft. Riley is a Federal Reservation and the people who live there get to vote in Kansas' elections. Why, well its in Kansas.

You get the point.

No other large nation has taken the approach the somewhat paranoid founders of the U.S. did.  St. Petersburg was the capital of Imperial Russia and it was not its own special district. When the capital was moved to Moscow, it didn't become one.  Berlin is some German federal reservation inside of Germany.  Paris hasn't been separated from France.  London isn't separate from the United Kingdom.  Dublin isn't separate from Ireland.  Ottawa in in Ontario.

Is it unfair that Washingtonians don't get to vote in congressional elections?  No, not really.  That was the entire idea.  And making Washington D. C. a state wouldn't increase fairness, it'd defeat it for the reasons mentioned above.

Want to give Washingtonians a say in Congress?  Make the city party of Maryland.  Yes, that would mean that Washingtonians would only be 700,000 out of some 7,000,000 in that state, but that's fair.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Carpenter United Methodist Church, Carpenter Wyoming.

Churches of the West: Carpenter United Methodist Church, Carpenter Wyoming.: 

Carpenter United Methodist Church, Carpenter Wyoming.

This is the Carpenter United Methodist Church in Carpenter, Wyoming.

Carpenter is a very small, but still there, town in southeastern Wyoming.  Indeed the town is almost in Colorado and and is has much of the character of western Nebraska.  Founded as a railroad town, the town hangs on in spite of its very small size and is quite isolated.

This church was obviously built early on as a Prairie Goth style church and then modified, probably in the 1970s, to have a new entry way.  The entry way is architecturally inconsistent with the remainder of the church so the exact thinking of the addition isn't obvious to an outside viewer.

Best Posts of the Week of April 18, 2021

 The best posts of the week of April 

Drawdown in Afghanistan

April 18, 1921. "Grave of Edith Barnett of New York City. An American Red Cross nurse who died in Siberia, Aug. 15, 1919. Monument placed at Tomsk, Siberia on April 18, 1921. Photograph taken on April 19, 1921"

April 18, 1941. The Camp X Escape.

April 19, 1941. National Service.

"We all do things we said we never would"

Pandemic, Part 5

Assumptions

Wars and Rumors of War. 2021

Today is Earth Day for 2021. . .

Some odd things you can do for the environment on Earth Day that may or may not have occurred to you.

Dazzling urbanites. . . buy a car.

April 24, 2021: Statement by President Joe Biden on Armenian Remembrance Day

 

Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring. Beginning on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination. We honor the victims of the Meds Yeghern so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history. And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.

Of those who survived, most were forced to find new homes and new lives around the world, including in the United States. With strength and resilience, the Armenian people survived and rebuilt their community. Over the decades Armenian immigrants have enriched the United States in countless ways, but they have never forgotten the tragic history that brought so many of their ancestors to our shores. We honor their story. We see that pain. We affirm the history. We do this not to cast blame but to ensure that what happened is never repeated. 

Today, as we mourn what was lost, let us also turn our eyes to the future—toward the world that we wish to build for our children. A world unstained by the daily evils of bigotry and intolerance, where human rights are respected, and where all people are able to pursue their lives in dignity and security. Let us renew our shared resolve to prevent future atrocities from occurring anywhere in the world. And let us pursue healing and reconciliation for all the people of the world.  

The American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today.

April 24, 2021: Statement by President Joe Biden on Armenian Remembrance Day

 

Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring. Beginning on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination. We honor the victims of the Meds Yeghern so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history. And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.

Of those who survived, most were forced to find new homes and new lives around the world, including in the United States. With strength and resilience, the Armenian people survived and rebuilt their community. Over the decades Armenian immigrants have enriched the United States in countless ways, but they have never forgotten the tragic history that brought so many of their ancestors to our shores. We honor their story. We see that pain. We affirm the history. We do this not to cast blame but to ensure that what happened is never repeated. 

Today, as we mourn what was lost, let us also turn our eyes to the future—toward the world that we wish to build for our children. A world unstained by the daily evils of bigotry and intolerance, where human rights are respected, and where all people are able to pursue their lives in dignity and security. Let us renew our shared resolve to prevent future atrocities from occurring anywhere in the world. And let us pursue healing and reconciliation for all the people of the world.  

The American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today.

The U.S. Army Reserve Commemorates 113 Years in Service to the Nation

Poster Saturday. We clear the way.