by William Cobbs

Created on: April 22, 2008   Last Updated: June 11, 2008

The Veteran's Day Mystery

Granma and Granpa and Happy Jones were enjoying a rare day in February in Rural Retreat,Virginia, sitting in the sun parlor of their old farmhouse. Granma was cleaning and pressing Grandpa's old World War II uniform for tomorrow was Veteran's Day.

Granpa was dozing instead of giving his usual pre-celebration lecture on how important it was to observe Veteran's Day. But Granma knew all of that and she wanted to be sure that Happi, her grandson who had lost his parents at age 2 and been raised by her and Granpa, learned evrything about veterans in America. So she started her history lesson. Until she retired, she had taught history at Rural Retreat High School.

Happi was all ears. He was a history buff as well as a n amateur detective, learning that from his friend a REAL detective, Feeber McCoy.(The security officer at the high school.) He and Feeber had already been in several mysteries,and had, working together, caught a lot of evil-doers.

Granma continued:

"Your great great great Granpas on both sides, mine and Granpas, were veterans in the American Revolution. That war was the most important one, because it was the beginning of the world's first modern democracy. We had heroes and veterans like Washington and Jefferson who had been Englishmen of great wealth before they went against George III the Germanic English king. It is amazing that the few Americans then could fight off a whole country, but we were helped a lot by the French, who hated the English and particularly the German English King.

I ought to mention that the Germans never gave up trying to dominate the world. They tried to get France in 1846 and in 1870 and then of course , two times later. Then MY people went North from Virginia, and when the War Between The States took place, MY people fought against Granpas' s people down here! That was our great grandaddys. I came back here and married Granpa.

Then our Daddies, mine and Granpas, fought in the Great World War in 1917-1918. THAT war was what started VETERANS DAY. When the bad people, the Germans, were finally defeated in France, it was at noon on October 11, 1918. All the guns stopped firing and the bad people, the Germans, came over with white flags and that war(supposedly to end wars!) was over.

Then the bad Germans went at it again, and we whipped them again in World War II...your Granpa helped do that!

We called that date in 1917 "Armistice Day" and we celebrated it up til' recently when we changed the name

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