Agree or disagree with vigil’s message – Sherp is a winter warrior

Well, I am now sure that Front Royal resident Len Sherp is SERIOUS about his Vigil for Democracy protest against the political direction of the nation as the Trump Administration and its Congressional allies reveal their blueprint for “American First”.

And while “first” for whom – Donald Trump; the corporate super-rich sociopaths among us; or Vladimir Putin and his criminal network of billionaire Russian oligarchs’ and their international associates (whoever that might include) – remains a disputed question, that is an Op-Ed for another day.

Lunch hour Vigil for Democracy, March 15, 2017, Front Royal, Virginia – Baby, it’s cold outside. Photos/Roger Bianchini

Politics aside, commitment is commitment – and standing for an hour on a Front Royal street corner on Wednesday, March 15 (hmm, the fabled Ides of March that laid Caesar low) in temperatures in the low 20’s and the now familiar wind gusts in the upper 30, 40 mph and beyond range – qualifies as commitment to me.

Winter warrior – Len Sherp continues his vigil against America’s move to the extreme right despite brutal wind and cold on March 15.

I was driving downtown when I realized – it is Wednesday lunch hour; the second weekly Vigil for Democracy is slated for the Front Royal Village Commons; and baby it is COLD outside – NO WAY.

WAY.

There he was, bundled up, scarf over face, alone and shivering.  I pulled over around 12:50 p.m.

Sherp said he’d had two people stop by in support so far on that frigid, late winter day, the second a man who asked what he was doing.  Explaining his demonstration in favor of transparency at the highest levels of government; the preservation of the function of the federal government to the benefit of all citizens; and more specific issues like affordable health care, he reported the visitor said, “That’s good – but it’s too cold to be out here today.”

Sherp said he replied, “It was colder during the Battle of the Bulge” – a reference to the perhaps decisive battle (at least on the Western front) against European fascism during World War II.  It was a battle in which, as recounted in the classic movie “Patton”, Virginia-bred aristocratic General George Patton’s Third Army “covered more ground, with more men, in less time than any army in history”.  That rapid movement through harsh conditions in December 1944 was necessary to fend off the German counterattack following Allied advances in the wake of the Normandy invasion.  That invasion of “Fortress Europe” was launched six months earlier to break the Nazi-led fascist stranglehold on the European continent – a stranglehold triangulated by Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain.

Roger Bianchini Sr. on a cruise towards his summer-winter 1944 ‘vacation’ in ‘Fortress Europe’.

I mentioned to Sherp that as a soldier in Patton’s Third Army, my father was wounded in that battle and carried a piece of shrapnel next to his spine that caused him discomfort for the rest of his life.

But, I added, he bore the pain to his death in 1977 as a natural consequence of his contribution to America’s fight against world fascism in the 1940s – for some the fight goes on …