Let us not forget the grizzled gents who served
Fifty years ago, Veterans Day made its first significant impression upon this budding young patriot.
Thursday, Nov. 11, 1965. I was a 20-year-old U.S. Army specialist stationed in Seoul, South Korea.
We were on duty that day — no rest for the wicked — but a 5 p.m. garrison flag retreat ceremony honored Veterans Day at Knight Field in front of Eighth U.S. Army Headquarters. The Eighth Army Band performed, joined by the United Nations Command/U.S. Forces Korea Honor Guard.
It was impressive.
I remember being moved by the ceremony — I felt a deep sense of pride — though I wasn’t moved to tears. To be fair, nothing moved me to tears in those days. I thought of myself as a hardened soldier. Were I to attend that same ceremony today I’d be reduced to a sappy sentimentalist.
I remember when Veterans Day was called Armistice Day.
On hundreds of occasions as a youngster I saw “old men” in front of business establishments selling artificial red paper poppies. They even occasionally came to our front door.
My mother often bought poppies. She told me the ancient men — who were far older than my dad, a World War II vet — were WWI veterans.
Veterans Day is the current designation for what used to be “Armistice Day.” Ninety-seven years ago Wednesday — Nov. 11, 1918 — on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the agreement that ended World War I was signed in a French railway carriage.
The cessation of hostilities marked a victory for the Allies and a bitter pill for Germany.
The final peace treaty, the infamous Treaty of Versailles, which many say paved the way for World War II, was signed in 1919. President Woodrow Wilson declared the first Armistice Day in the U.S. on Nov. 11, 1919.
In 1954, when I was 9, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation changing the name of the legal holiday from Armistice Day to Veterans Day.
Today, Memorial Day, which is observed on the final Monday of May, honors men and women in uniform who died serving this country. Veterans Day honors all who’ve served honorably, in war and peacetime. Its purpose is to thank living veterans for their service.
“Veterans Day is dedicated to those Americans who have borne the responsibility of defending our traditions,” wrote my commanding officer in Korea, Gen. Dwight E. Beach, in a memo to the troops in 1965. “They served their country gallantly and successfully.
“Now, the responsibility falls on us, and we must dedicate ourselves anew to the principles for which so many have given so much. Our vigilance and preparedness will ensure that their heroic efforts will not have been in vain.”
An article in the Nov. 8, 1965 edition of the Eighth Army Support Command newspaper — of which I was a staff member — said: “On this day of tribute and remembrance for the nation’s patriots, we have a two-fold obligation to those who have preceded us: First, to remember their sacrifices, and, second, to draw from their example the inspiration and fortitude which the future will demand of us if we are to secure freedom for ourselves and our posterity.”
Those words still ring true.
As mentioned earlier, as a boy I remember elderly gentlemen wearing red paper mache poppies in their lapels. Why poppies? They grew in abundance in Belgium’s Flanders fields, where tens of thousands of WWI soldiers fell.
The poppies were memorialized in the lines of Canadian poet John McCrae’s powerful verses:
“In Flanders field 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.”
McCrae, a medical officer with the 1st Canadian Contingent at the battle of the Ypres Salient, wrote his lines in May 1915. He didn’t survive the war.
Sadly, we no longer recall the message of the humble poppy. And gone are the grizzled gents to remind us.
We must not forget them.
JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.