Grock (Adrien Wettach), remembered as the “King of Clowns” tells of entertaining maimed and crippled soldiers from World War 1.
“All my desire was to enable them to forget the terrible reality of their state… little by little {I} succeeded in conjuring up that deeply human and tragi-comic world of absurdity… nonsense… and at the same time profound wisdom. Blind eyes were raised, making the smile more eloquent… these young men … clapped their stumps together for lack of hands, stamped, shouted and laughed; laughed with all their hearts.”
America has plenty of wounded warriors returning home every day. Today is the day to thank them for their service, and maybe tell them a joke.