Veterans Day recalls service, sacrifice and a desire for peace

Above, local high school bands warmed the crowd up – WCHS and R-MA pictured, Skyline out of frame; below, as the WC Courthouse clock clicks toward 11 a.m., the R-MA Color Guard stands ready. See 10 more event photos at the end of story. Photos/Roger Bianchini

An impressive thing about Veterans Day services from year to year in Front Royal is the broad remembrance of its origin.  While 2017 veered from the norm of initiating that remembrance at the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month minus one day due to that 11^th day coming on Saturday, the emotions were no different.

If the public officials acknowledging our memory of personal sacrifice for a greater good change from year to year, the thought does not.  This year’s keynote speaker was Col. John C. Casserino of R-MA; John Kokernak acknowledged the POW’s and MIA’s; Front Royal’s incumbent Mayor Hollis Tharpe spoke; Haley Wills directed the E. Wilson Morrison Choir; R-MA provided the Color Guard; and the WCHS, Skyline and R-MA bands performed.

Other people and images remain constant from year to year – a Gold Star Mother Helen Seekford, bundled from the cold; chaplains asking for God’s blessing on those who have served and those who wait anxiously for their return; and the veterans themselves who’s crisp salutes and erect posture recall the duty and discipline of their service.

This year Shelley Remillard of the Post 53 Ladies Auxiliary’s invocation asked, as others have in other years, for Divine countenance on his humble creatures gathered, to evolve beyond a need for war as a solution to human disagreement.

Each year that I hear that plea for peace I am reminded why we traditionally celebrate what is now known as Veteran’s Day at 11 a.m. on 11-11 each year.  One year after World War I ended on that 11^th hour, of the 11^th day, of the 11^th month of 1918, by Presidential Decree “Armistice Day” was created to recall the end of what was, perhaps naively at the time, thought by many to be the end of the “War That Would End All Wars”.

Why such a belief? – Because war, as brutal and far-reaching as it had been throughout recorded history, had never before seen such a face.  It was the face of modern technology – machine guns, tanks, airplanes and poison gas, meeting old-world fighting techniques of tightly-lined assaults into the teeth of enemy positions; a war where retreat was followed by the gas, the tanks, the bombs from the sky, and refuge was perilous at best.

The result was a carnage lasting just under five years that saw over 17 million killed, 7 million of those civilians; and another 20 million wounded across Europe.  Surely the human race had learned a lesson – that modern technology and war were incompatible with its survival.

But today, 99 years after the end of that war and 98 years after the first Armistice Day celebration, we know that hope appears to have been a futile one.  As Keynote Speakers often note of Veterans Day and its Armistice Day origin, “It celebrates peace; but as the ancient Greek philosophers said, ‘Only the dead see an end to war.’

And perhaps realization of that unhappy fact is why “Armistice Day” has evolved into “Veterans Day” since our collective experience is that 11-11-1918 did NOT mark the end of the war that would end all wars.

Giles B. Cook Legion Post 53 Commander Larry Funk again hosted our Front Royal-Warren County Veterans Day ceremony.  As Commander Funk has lamented in past ceremonies, many of our surviving veterans of the wars that have come since 1918 continue to deal with consequences of their wartime experiences.  He has urged us not to forget the large number of homeless veterans, as many as 67,000 have been cited on previous Veterans Days here; as well as unemployed vets.  Most tragically for those who have returned, Funk has pointed to as many as 20 veteran suicides a day in some yeas.

On a chill, windy but suddenly bright, sunny, mid-fall day in 2017, I found my thoughts drifting to the poem “In Flanders Fields”, referenced last year by then-Mayor Tim Darr.   The poem was written in May 1915 by Canadian military doctor and artillery commander Major John McCrae.  Its impetus is believed to have been McCrae’s conduct of the field burial service for Lieutenant Alexis Helmer in the absence of a company chaplain:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

It is my recollection that Veterans Day 2014 was the first cited without a veteran of World War I still alive.  And as then, again on November 11, I mean 10^th, 2017, I found myself humming as I was thinkin’ on all this.  The melody and lyrics of a mid-1960s song penned by 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Bob Dylan began drifting into my mind.  So as last year in Royal Examiner’s coverage of Veterans Day, I think these Nobel Prize-contributing lyrics appropriate to conclude our annual tribute to our military veterans, past, present and future, with a still hopeful nod to its forbearer, Armistice Day:

With God On Our Side

Oh my name it is nothin’, my age it means less
The country I come from, is called the Midwest
I’s taught and brought up there, the laws to abide
And the land that I live in, has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it, they tell it so well; The cavalries charged, the Indians fell; The cavalries charged, the Indians died; Oh the country was young then, with God on its side

The Spanish-American, War had its day
And the Civil War too, was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes, I’s made to memorize
With guns on their hands, and God on their side.

The First World War, boys, it came and it went; The reason for fighting, I never did get; But I learned to accept it, accept it with pride; For you don’t count the dead, when God’s on your side.

When the Second World War came to an end
We forgave the Germans, and then we were friends
Though they murdered six million, in the ovens they fried
The Germans now too, have God on their side.

I’ve learned to hate the Russians, all through my whole life
If another war comes, it’s them we must fight
To hate them and fear them, to run and to hide
And accept it all bravely, with God on my side.

But now we got weapons, of chemical dust
If fire them we’re forced to, then fire them we must
One push of the button, and the shot’s worldwide
And you never ask questions, when God’s on your side.

In a many dark hour, I’ve been thinkin’ about this,
That Jesus Christ, was betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for you, you’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot, had God on his side

So now as I’m leavin’, I’m weary as hell
The confusion I’m feelin’, ain’t no tongue can tell
The words fill my head, and fall to the floor
If God’s on our side, He’ll stop the next war.

A beautiful, if chilly fall Veterans Day in Front Royal

This 3-photo sequence shows the Colors being presented as Gold Star Mother Helen Seekford watches.

In the background, flags at half staff in front of the new Front Royal Town Hall as the ceremony begins; at center foreground, local Memorial Day event organizer Malcolm Barr Sr. brought his Husky Pola as a tribute to the role of the dogs of war.

Shelley Remillard of the Post 53 Ladies Auxiliary delivers the invocation.

The E. Wilson Morrison Choir under direction of Haley Wills.

Mayor Hollis Tharpe remembers the service and sacrifice of America’s soldiers.

With a remembrance of the nation’s POW’s and MIA’s in place on an empty chair in front of him, Giles B. Cook Post 53 Commander Larry Funk addresses the service of those who return and those who do not.

Veterans Randy Vaughan, left, and Danny Whitsell were among those to enjoy a post-ceremony luncheon at the Legion Post 53 headquarters following the 2017 Veterans Day ceremony. (We’d like to thank Post 53’s ‘Buster’ Ramos for his help in assembling information on this year’s event)