Adolf Hitler never got over it, and never forgot the shame he felt when his country was forced to sign a surrender agreement in a railway car parked near the little French town of Compiegne. That event took place on Nov. 11, 1918, and ended the Great War, or as we know it, World War I. Today, virtually no one remembers anything of that war and few can explain why that date is important. One cannot be surprised because we forget even our own wedding dates, but still there are reasons to remember what used to be called “Armistice Day.”

There may be as many as three surviving veterans of World War I. But when I was a kid, many of my uncles and other adults had served in that war. The headmaster of my school had been badly wounded in France and his handshake was limp because his right arm and shoulder had been mangled by machine gun fire as he “went over the top” just three weeks before the armistice.

And while the destruction of the European countryside in certain areas was devastating, there were things about that war that were very different from the next one. In the Great War the airplane was relatively new, so that war did not involve the massive bombing of cities and the total destruction that took place in World War II. Moreover, the stalemate that resulted in the line of trenches that ran from Belgium through France to Switzerland meant that the victorious Allies never invaded Germany to visit on that nation the punishment the Russians and Allies inflicted in the next war. But the human losses were still monumental and those led to the emotional and touching reverence that surrounded Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day as the British termed it.

In Britain and throughout the empire, Nov. 11 was a day of solemn recollection of the sacrifices made in that war. The loss of life in Britain and France (and Germany) was staggering. I once spent six months living in the tiny village of Sutton Courtenay near the Cotswolds, west of London, and often walked to a small green in the center of which stood a memorial to those who had died in the first war. There is one in every town in England put there by Parliament after the war.

For such a tiny town of less than 5,000 citizens, the list seemed long, so I counted the names. There were about 125 listed, including several who were obviously brothers. Imagine one small village losing that many of its sons. The simple stone obelisk reminded me of the entire generation that was more than decimated by the machine guns of the Germans when their generals ordered them to try once again to do the impossible and successfully assault impregnable defensive positions. These brave kids had no chance and it is no wonder their families wanted to remember them on the day the shooting stopped. Importantly, the holiday was not to celebrate a victory, but rather to pause and to remember. Just to remember.

I have visited some of the major battlefields of that war, from Verdun in the south of France, where there is an ossuary containing the bones of 200,000 soldiers who could not be identified. (The bones are stuffed into a giant glass room and the effect on the visitor is overwhelming.)

To the north, the fields of Flanders in Belgium are filled with cemeteries. One cannot drive very far in any direction without seeing signs for a British, French or German burial site. I remember being stunned to see grave markers with the Star of David on them in German cemeteries, but then I recalled that many Jews faithfully served in the German army and were later shocked when Hitler turned his venom on them.

The pain of the Great War is now long forgotten, and we have our own wars and our own dead to remember. But there is something both touching and tragic about these wars in which so many die and so few have to fight.

Those of us blessed by our good fortune should at least pause briefly on Wednesday and maybe even say a small prayer of thanks to the young men and now women who still go off to war and still die and still try to serve us and their country. That they are willing to do so generation after generation is literally wonderful. They fill me with wonder.

Vincent, former commissioner of Major League Baseball, lives in Indian River County.

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