Sunday Nov. 11 is Veterans Day, the day we honor military veterans who served in the United States Armed Forces.
Is there a veteran in your life that you’d thank and/or like to share a story about? Do so in the comments section.
In photo: Mayor Fuller with US Army Major Cara Salmon taken at the Veterans Day event at the Post 440. Mayor Fuller’s comments can be found in the comments section.
My high school history teacher was a Kindertransport child, evacuated from Austria to England. She told us about being taught by the generation of “spinster teachers” (her words) who were the women who’d never married because so many younger men of their generation were killed in the “Great War”. That made the magnitude of the toll feel real in a way no numbers in books could.
My dad was a World War 1 combat veteran and I’ve felt his presence in the last few months as I began to chronicle the final months that led up to today’s 100th anniversary of the Armistice. He was in the thick of the last three horrific battles in northern France and was gassed just hours before word came down that the War would be ending on the 11th of November.
Like almost all veterans of that War, dad never talked about the horrors he saw or even many of the non combat details of his service in France. The only hint I had of what he went through came when he erupted at me one morning when I was home from Washington. I had gone in to take an early morning shower. When I got out, he yelled in to ask that I shower at night instead of the morning when he was still asleep, but an hour or so later, he came down to the kitchen and apologized profusely for blowing up at me. He said that whenever he heard the shower running, he’d ‘be dragged back against his will to the muddy trenches in France and the bone chilling rain that always seemed to be there.
A few months before he died, I found a bottle of Jack Daniels in our wine closet and my dad and I spent an afternoon getting sloshed. He knew he didn’t have much time left and he wanted to tell me something about the War. He recounted the horrors he had seen and the effect it had had on him. The only story he told that I fully remember was a day he and others were walking past a trench where dead allied soldiers were temporarily placed before being transported to the rear. Suddenly he noticed that one of the soldiers in the trench was moving and someone shouted he’s alive. Just at that moment, a huge rat came right through the dead man’s mouth.
Dad despised bombastic flag wavers who equated saluting the flag with patriotism. He said that men who do so probably never saw combat and I’ve found over the years that he was far more right than wrong on that. He left the VFW in the early 50s after they condemned President Truman for sacking Douglas MacArthur. He always thought that Truman was underrated and that MacArthur was a “showboat” and “horse’s ass”. This didn’t always play well when Newton was a still a Republican bastion, but he really didn’t care.
The last time I saw my dad alive was in the hospital the night that George McGovern lost to Richard Nixon in 1972. Dad thought the world of McGovern partly because he opposed the Vietnam War that we both thought was off the rails, but more so because he knew the dangers and heartbreaks of war from flying 30+ bombing missions over the 3rd Reich.
I got up at 5 am this morning to see the Anniversary ceremonies from Paris. Everything was very moving, but the best was yesterday when German Chancellor Merkel and French President Macron shook hands and embraced at Compiegne where the Armistice was signed in 1918. CSPAN 3 is devoting 2 full days to films and talks about World War I. Well worth viewing.
My dad, Harold M. Reibman, was attending Lafayette College in Easton, PA when World War II broke out. He left school to enlist in the Army. After several days and nights in a foxhole during the Battle of the Bulge his feet became severely frost bitten and was air lifted to a hospital in London. Upon recovery he was assigned a desk job in General Eisenhower’s office in France. He completed his degree at Lafayette after the war.
An autographed photo of Eisenhower thanking my father for his service always had a place of honor on a bookshelf in my family’s den.
Here’s the text from Mayor Ruthanne Fuller’s Veteran’s Day remarks given t the American Legion Nonantum Post 440
One hundred years ago today, at this very time, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the Allies signed the armistice with Germany ending the fighting on land, in the air and on the sea.
It would be another seven months before the Treaty of Versaille officially ended World War I, but what a hopeful morning that must have been.
The fighting had ended, Democracy had prevailed, our troops were coming home, and Americans rejoiced in the idea that the world would be at peace.
One hundred years later, we know that the peace didn’t last.
The women and men of America would go on to fight in World War II, in Korea, in Vietnam, in the Middle East and the Caribbean, in Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq.
The brave women and men who answered the call to duty were also sent to keep the peace, deployed to far off lands as a deterrent against the horrors of war that those of you who served know intimately.
One hundred years later, as we gather here this morning, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, we still yearn for peace, the original idea of Armistice Day. Let’s never lose that hope.
I want to thank our keynote speaker U.S. Army Major Cara Salmon, the sister of Emer Mezzetti who works in our Human Resources Department, Veterans Services Director Seth Bai for organizing today’s ceremony and Veterans Donation Drive and Commander Joe Sturniolo of American Legion Nonantum Post 440 as well as Commander Nick Pasquarosa of the Sons of the American Legion for hosting us today.
I also want to thank the American Legion and the Sons of the American Legion for the work they do all year long. For example, Senior Vice Commander Richard Spaulding of the Sons noticed that the plaque honoring Frederick McLaughlin of Newton Corner who made the ultimate sacrifice in Vietnam was stranded behind multiple MassDOT fences on the St. James Bridge. Richard, working with Seth Bai at City Hall, had the plaque moved and just a few weeks ago we gathered with Fred’s sister, Ruth, to re-commemorate it. This week, when not once, not twice but three times, someone vandalized the flags on the bridge, the Sons were there immediately to replace them.
Please know that the Newton Police Department is on the case, including additional patrols.
It is also so good to see so many of you here to show your support for our troops and our veterans.
Also with us here today are City Councilors ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
This is the day when as a City and a Nation we stop to honor our Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine and National Guard veterans who took the most solemn oath to defend this country, putting their own future on the line for ours.
Elmer Davis, a radio reporter and the Director of U.S. Army Information during World War II in his distinctive Hoosier accent said so powerfully,
“This land will remain the home of the free only as long as it is the home of the brave.”
We salute you, our brave Newton veterans.
Could I ask all veterans to stand if you are able or to raise your hand?
I, Ruthanne Fuller, Mayor of the City of Newton, on behalf of all the residents, thank you and one additional person. I would like to include my Dad, who turns 93 next month, and served in the Navy in World War II.
My dad retired from the army as Major Ray F Bowen. He served during WWII and Korea. He had a lot of stories to tell – he was a jokester – but stayed away from telling the heart wrenching ones that changed him. He flew missions into and out of the major war zones in each war. I wasn’t born during WWII but was a terrified little one during Korea. I couldn’t understand why my dad was in such danger in a place I didn’t know existed until then. I’ve been thinking a lot about him recently – there are so many things I wish I could ask him.
I had 12 uncles in both wars. One died at Pearl Harbor. One served with Patton until the end. I’ve heard so many stories I feel like I understand a tad of what they went through. This year I’ve read 13 books that had something to with WWII in each different country involved.
My husband Captain Billy Boguski served in Vietnam. What an ugly war that was and an ugly reception when they came home.
Today though what bothers me most is the 94 yo holocaust survivor of hate and anti-semitism who was murdered while worshipping in a synagogue by an anti-Semite in the United States of America. Shameful.
My grandfather, “Grandpa Jim” as we used to call him, more properly Grenville Paul North Jr., was a pilot in World War 2. I miss him dearly.
Thank you to all who serve.
America’s World War I vets were among our finest and bravest. The question remains, however, as to the interests of the United States entering the Great War — as it did at a time when the Allied and Central powers were about to quit in stalemate and suffering. Imperial Germany pre-WWI, to some degree, was democratic; and Americans of German ancestry outnumbered those of British ancestry. Certainly America entering the War both extended it and turned the tide to Allied victory; and certainly Allied victory and the terms of the Treaty of Versailles including extraction of German reparations and vast territorial concessions, contributed to German hyper-inflation, the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, the Holocaust, and World War II. British banking and industrial interests simply held far greater sway over American politicians — so President Wilson, who campaigned for his 1916 re-election on the slogan “he kept us out of war,” reversed course, and the course of history — inaugurating our legacy of mounting national debt, as the War was financed largely by the newly created Federal Reserve (our private central bank). Of course, one could question the interests of the European participants even commencing that war, ultimately leaving that continent a hulk of its former self. So, while honoring our brave veterans in that war, we may want to remember that their sacrifice did not necessarily foster democracy, rather it may have fostered both Nazism and a Communist Soviet Union, which seeds were planted in the defeat of Germany and the Central Powers.