Is it worth remembering

Subject: RE: Is it worth remembering
From: Catherine Jayne
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 11:53 AM

As a child I couldn't see the point in the rememberance services that I went to with my Grandparents and then later sang at as part of a choir. Now I am slightly older and all I know of the WW's is what we were taught at school and the childhood memories of my grandparents who were born in the the 1930's. I was only a toddler when the Faulklands War happened so the only personal knowledge I have is of the Gulf war when friends fathers were sent abroad on service not knowing if they would come home to their families.

I remember so that we don't forget. If another war happens then it will be my brother and cousins and friends brothers and sisters and cousins going to fight. My brother is in the RAF and wants to serve his country.....I fear for him and others like him but I admire him more.

Don't forget and lets not make the same mistakes.

Subject: RE: Is it worth remembering
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 02:44 PM

I posted the following on another thread just a bit ago (the Mark Twain War Prayer thread), but having read the posts on this thread, I believe it might have fit better here. So, with your indulgence, I will poke it in here as well. In re-reading it, it occurred to me that I was a bit "Americo-centric" in stating that WWII started when I was ten (1941). I was thinking of Pearl Harbor. It actually started in both Europe and Asia a number of years earlier. My apologies.

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Having been chided that making an anti-war statement in proximity to Veteran's Day was "insensitive," I would like to clarify my thoughts on the matter.

My father was a veteran—of World War I. "The War to End All Wars." He was on the cutting edge of technology at the time: the newly formed armored cavalry—the tank corps. I had a number of relatives who fought in World War II, including a cousin, Art McGuire, who was in the Marines. Captured in the Philippines early in the war, he spent most of the war in a Japanese prison camp after surviving the infamous Bataan Death March. I have a number of friends who fought in the Korean "police action." For example, Dick Gibbons, who wrote Sully's Pail (in DT and recorded by Tom Paxton), who can describe being nearly hit (a mortar round, if I remember right) and diving into a foxhole with his clothes on fire. One of my closest friends was Buzz Ross, married to another close friend. Buzz became a helicopter pilot and was sent to Vietnam just a few weeks before Christmas. Two weeks after he arrived there, while evacuating a bunch of wounded, Buzz's helicopter was hit. He managed to crash-land the chopper, saving the lives of everyone else on board, but he was hit in the head by a rotor that smashed through the cab. He died a day later. Marcia and I spent a New Year's Eve holding each other and weeping.

World War II started when I was ten years old, and it ended when I was fourteen. I followed the war diligently, listening to news reports, reading newspapers and pouring over the pictures in Life Magazine. I was especially fascinated by airplanes, and I could draw a B-25 Mitchell bomber or a P-51 Mustang fighter right down to the last rivet.

When I entered the University of Washington in 1949, I soon met a number of men who were somewhat older than the usual run of college students. My new friends were war veterans going to school on the G. I. Bill. I recall sitting in on a couple of what struck me at the time as really bizarre conversations over coffee in the Husky Union Building cafeteria. One of my friends had been in the Air Force. He had been a fighter pilot in Europe. Another was a German student named Rolf Holtzmann, who was attending the U. of W. on a foreign exchange program. He had been a pilot in the Luftwaffe. These two former fighter pilots—former enemies—spent many hours together discussing the war, enthusiastically comparing the characteristics of the P-51 Mustang and the Messerschmitt ME-109, and combing through past missions in an effort to determine if they had ever come close to meeting in the skies over Europe. They shared a lot of experiences. They shared a love of airplanes and flying. They became good friends.

Had they actually met in the skies over Europe, each would have done his utmost to kill the other.

There's a lesson in that.

I honor and respect veterans, whether it is Veteran's Day of not. BUT—rather than eschewing my anti-war stance, I sincerely believe that the greatest honor that I can pay veterans is to do everything in my poor power to attempt to bring about a world in which war veterans no longer exist. And why would war veterans no longer exist? You figure it out.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Is it worth remembering
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 03:12 PM

Thanks for that Don. There seems to be a near tyranny among some here, wishing to silence any and all criticism of war, or discussions of fighting for peace this Veteran's Day, when we are once again on the brink of what will be a polarizing, unpopular war.

Lest we forget--not everyone who went to Vietnam volunteered, nor does every Vietnam vet want to be thanked for what they did while there. Divine forgiveness, something none of us can give, seems to be what many seem to be seeking. For others, the rhetoric of "thanks" rings hollow--those who when they needed medical care after the war, had it denied them by the government who sent them to war, and turned their backs on them when they came home. The government who denied the effects of agent orange, post-traumatic stress, etc. The government who arrested the VVAW for trying to march in Veteran's Day parades, that sort of thing.

After living with the traumas and effects of so many wars in my lifetime, I'm with you. I too honor and respect veterans, but not just one day a year, and not more than I honor and respect peace warriors who sacrificed a great deal to stand by the courage of their convictions too. I think we need a much larger army of the latter, rather than a build up of the former.

Subject: RE: Is it worth remembering
From: mg
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 03:16 PM

Yes. If it means something to you and you can do it in a positive way without hurting people in the meantime. Otherwise, just go shopping or enjoy the day at a movie or at work or in a park or whereever. mg

Subject: RE: Is it worth remembering
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 03:18 PM

Did you watch the memorial at the Wall Mary? I thought it was lovely.

Subject: RE: Is it worth remembering
From: Megan L
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 03:23 PM

Many thanks to all who revived this thread. Pushkin my fatherin law was a bevan boy. they gave so much, many gave thier lives. yet they recieved so little recognition. My own father worked on the clydeside making submarine hatches