Veteran’s Day recalls service, sacrifice and a desire for peace

CLICK HERE to see the Veteran’s Day Gallery

RMA Color Guard

An impressive thing about Veterans Day services from year to year in Front Royal is the broad remembrance of its origin.  Today, at 11 AM, on the 11^th day of the 11^th month, local officials and civic leaders, veterans, and a lone Gold Star Mother gathered with others at the Warren County Courthouse to remember – and to pray.  Those prayers began with the opening invocation by Sons of American Legion Chaplain Mike Martin:

Sons of American Legion Chaplain Mike Martin

Almighty God, you have granted us grace within our hearts and one voice.
We pray for peace throughout the world.
We pray for the leaders of this great nation.
We pray for our ministers and all those who have been called to serve.
We pray for our veterans. We honor those men and women who gave their lives to serve and protect our country.
We pray for the sick and for those who are suffering.
We pray for the poor and the oppressed, and for those who remember to care for them.
May the Lord bless you and keep you.
We bring these prayers to you, in your name – AMEN.

And as mentioned repeatedly from the SAL Chaplain’s invocation to Keynote Speaker Brian Madden, what is being remembered is not only service and sacrifice, but also the soldiers’ never-ending desire for peace – and as Chaplain Martin reminded us, for those who suffer, not only from war on faraway fronts, but here at home, perhaps even next door.

The breadth and depth of the themes we gather to recall on Veterans Day began with Chaplain Martin, and continued through remarks from Front Royal Mayor Tim Darr, Giles B. Cook Legion Post 53 Commander Larry Funk and Keynote Speaker Madden.  They reminded us why we celebrate at 11 AM 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 human history, had never seen such a face before.  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 of 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.

Keynote Speaker – Brian Madden

But today, 98 years after the end of that war and 97 years after the first Armistice Day celebration, we know that hope was a futile one.  As Keynote Speaker Brian Madden, retired U.S. Army 1976-79 and U.S. Navy 1982-88, noted of Veterans Day and its origin, “It celebrates peace; but as the ancient Greek philosophers said, ‘Only the dead see an end to war.’

RMA Band plays taps.

But as Madden and others pointed out, many of our surviving veterans of the wars that have come since 1918 continue to deal with the consequences of their wartime experiences.  Legion Commander Funk lamented 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 cited 20 veteran suicides a day, a number up two per day from previous Veterans Days statistics.

Placing the wreath

Both Funk and Madden addressed the need to hold our politicians responsible for meaningful legislation, and the necessary funding to achieve promised reform in the Veterans Administration.  Those politicians include our President-Elect, whom fellow Republican Madden noted has promised “to fix the VA.”

Mayor Tim Darr

Citing the plight of soldiers in all wars, Mayor Darr quoted from the poem “In Flanders Fields”, written in May 1915 by Canadian military doctor and artillery commander Major John McCrae.  McCrae is believed to have begun writing his poem shortly after conducting the field burial service for fellow soldier Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, in the absence of the 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.”

Legion Commander Larry Funk

It is my recollection that Veterans Day 2014 was the first cited without a veteran of World War I still alive.  And as then, on November 11, 2016, I found myself humming as I was thinkin’ on all this. The lyrics of a mid-1960s song penned by recent Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Bob Dylan began drifting into my mind.  So, in honor of all our veterans, past, present and future, I think these Nobel Prize-contributing lyrics appropriate to conclude our 2016 remembrance of Veterans Day, as well as 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.

CLICK HERE to see the Veteran’s Day Gallery