Veterans
Day
It was a strange day.
I was standing in line at a coffee
cart in midtown. I was in line behind a young Latino who was wearing his
Marines warm up track suit. He turned to me and said “Happy Veterans day.
Hoo-ah!” Uh, yeah. I had no idea what that was about. I was dressed, well,
about as normal as I get. Black jeans, my civilian flight jacket with
absolutely no military insignia- it does have an American flag on the left
shoulder and a small brass pin on my collar “New York Aviation Alliance”. I had
on my USS New York baseball cap that I bought when I attended the ship’s
commissioning. And I can’t tell you how many of those baseball caps were sold
to civilians on that day! So I wasn’t passing myself off as a war veteran or
even as a military man.
I had come to Manhattan on my day off
to attend the Veterans Day parade. I got there early but even then there was a
nice crowd. I remember those Veterans Day parades of not too many years past
when the marchers outnumbered the spectators and the day after the tabloids
would decry the lack of patriotism. That was a long time and two wars ago.
I’m standing on Fifth Avenue
waiting for the parade proper to start. It’s a typical New York scene. Commerce above all. A couple
of guys walking around selling American flags, “Flags, who needs a flag?
Everyone needs a flag, Three dollars.” One young mother stops him and starts to
buy one, “Two flags for five dollars.” She is relived. She gets one flag for each
of her kids. She knows she will be preventing a lot of distress during the next
few hours.
So I’m standing there along Fifth Avenue,
taking in the scene on this cold but clear day when a Marine colonel in dress
blues, who was walking up the middle of the avenue, veers directly towards me,
sticks out his hand and says “Thank you for your service”. I am stunned. I
mumble “You too”. That’s all I could think to say. Why in the world would he
come over to me and say that? I wear no military insignia. I hate people who
wear insignia or ribbons which they are not entitled to wear. I claim no status
as a result of my less than minuscule service in the Coast Guard reserve. Why
me?
Anyhow, it was a great
parade, I suppose. Not one but two Medal
of Honor winners! Tons of colorful flags. Marching bands from across the country. Veterans taking in all the acclamation they
could absorb. Civilians praising their heroes.
Stirring sights of wounded veterans. God Star mothers. Kitsch with the
Andrews Sisters-type singers. More
pipers than in England, Ireland, and Scotland combined! Military units!
Marching bands! Politicians who needed to be seen! More than 20,000 marchers in
all!
I didn’t stay for the whole
thing. I sort of felt there was too much commercialism with the walking
advertisements for Chase bank and American Airlines. I felt the unseemliness of
the NYC Department of Corrections hauling out and parading their white painted
armored personnel carrier. Why? What did it have to do with Veterans Day?
I went to Grand Central Terminal
to catch the train home and to attend a smaller ceremony at the Bronx VA. At
GCT I bought a cup of chili and the guy behind the counter said “Happy Veterans
Day, but I guess you can’t really call it happy.” Uh, yeah, right. What do you
say to that?
On the train ride home, chili
in hand, I wondered what had turned the veterans parade around from the point not
too many years ago where people thought about cancelling it to the behemoth it
had become. Yes, there were two wars. Yes, we had been attacked on 9/11, but it
didn’t seem to explain the turn out.
“Thank you for your service.”
“Thank you for your service”. That was the day’s mantra, yet it seemed so odd.
It felt wrong in concept. It didn’t sound right, and I don’t mean as it was improperly
directed towards me. It was like an ill fitting suit. It looks nice but
something is wrong.
Then, well, it hit me. “Your service.” “Your service.”
No “Band of Brothers” thing here. You went to war. "Your."
"Your." Not mine, not ours. "Your".
With the end of the draft the
military had become a separate caste, a cohort of nobles, or incompetents who
couldn’t find a way to get rich, who volunteered to do society’s dirty work
while everyone else went shopping or celebrated or wept over the stock market,
as appropriate. Hell, they were only doing what President Bush (the Second)
told them to do, “Go shopping or the terrorists win.” So they did. And so
without a draft to provide a unifying force that spread the pain across all
segments and sections of society, the new, heroic military caste was born, a caste
separate from “us”. No more a part of us than characters in a popular video
game.
The truth is that the pain of
the last decade of war has been borne by less than 1% of the American public. The
men who endured, and with luck survived 6, 7, 8, even 9 deployments to combat
zones were mostly invisible to the rest of our society. The families who
similarly bore their burdens were likewise unseen.
I then went to the Bronx Veterans
Administration hospital for a remembrance ceremony put together by the Reverend
William Kalaidjian, Staff Chaplin at that facility. It was a small ceremony which
was held in the lovely chapel on the grounds of the VA facility. There was a
lone piper who played the five service hymns (why does everyone forget the
Coast Guard?). 50 maybe 75 veterans representing World War
2, Korea, and Vietnam
showed up. The older guys were bent with age. Some had to be wheeled in. It seemed that the Vietnam guys consisted of mostly
black men as opposed to the white guys from the previous wars. Our politics was
showing.
I guess the guys from Iraq (I and II) and Afghanistan will show up in the
future.
There was a Boy Scout color guard. We recited
the Pledge of Allegiance. A chamber music quartet played Mozart and Debussy.
Some words were spoken. We sang “God Bless America” then retired to the back
of the chapel for some punch and cookies.
In this small ceremony, I
felt that more honor was paid, and more respect shown, and with more honesty
than in the big parade downtown. It was a quiet and dignified affair that
matched the quiet and dignified manner of the veterans. It was solemn without
being maudlin. It was altogether fitting and proper for those of us in
attendance to give up a few minutes of our time in this place to honor and
remember those who gave up their lives.
So “Thank you for your
service,” sounds so cheap when it comes from someone who has not served. It is
cheap praise for your mercenary, your hired hand, your long term servant in
good standing. But from someone who has been there, done that, and got the
t-shirt (or at least a DD 214N), it is an acknowledgment of being in the
brotherhood, and the sharing of an experience that no one else could possibly
understand.
As I said, it was a strange
day.
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