My late dad never cared much for "Veterans Day." Oh, he had only utmost respect for all of our veterans, living and dead, and instilled that ethic in all seven of his kids. No, the reason he didn't like it was its name.
For Dad, November 11 was always Armistice Day, a commemoration of the official end of World War I. See, my dad was born in 1908 and was too young to be shipped off Over There to lose limbs or lungs to mustard gas, but he was old enough to remember The War To End All Wars and what it did to his family, his friends, and our country. He also remembered his older brother's and his uncles' tales of the horrors of it, and the sacrifices made by so many the world over to end it. Dad believed that by changing the focus of this day of remembrance to encompass all veterans of all wars, we would lose our appreciation of the meaning of WWI itself and, to some extent, the horrors of the war itself. Every year on November 11, we would travel to Dad's little hometown in SE Michigan to visit the grave of old Uncle Claude, a man I never met and knew only through family's stories about him -- the man who died in the trenches in France under the bayonet of young German soldier who was probably no older than his own nineteen years -- to lay a wreath on his grave.
Yesterday was one of those freakishly warm and beautiful mid November days across much of mid-America; the kind of day that almost makes a person think that if global warming could just stop right here and not get any worse, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad deal. It's not supposed be 74 degrees with a light wind from the south on Veterans Day. It's supposed to be cold, grey, gloomy and a bit inhospitable. But yesterday was the opposite of that; it was a glorious end to Autumn, with the last vestiges of fall color still hanging on to some of the maples and oaks, tinged with crimson and gold. A perfect day, for any motorcycle rider, to don a leather jacket and head out on some twisty two lane roads for a last warm fling before the snow flies. So I did, little knowing that this November 11 would soon bring me back to my childhood visits to Uncle Claude's grave back there in Michigan.
I started out with no real destination in mind, opening my Missouri Gazetter to a random page and thinking, wherever my finger lands on the map that's where I'll go today. My finger landed somewhere NW of Mexico and somewhere SW of Paris. Missouri, that is. Ah, the old Union Covered Bridge. Perfect! Now to choose a route. How about old Highway Z, up through Centralia, MO and then Hwy C to the old bridge, one of four such covered bridges still standing in the state, and beatifully restored by the state's Department of Natural Resources and its Park Service.
Now, I had no idea that the people of Centralia, like many towns in the midwest, had erected a veritable ocean of American Flags in their town's main cemetery right in the middle of town. But my route just happened to take me right past it, and the instant I saw this sight, I knew I had to stop
It was really kind of a breathtaking view from the road. Hundreds of flags flying high, each on its own flagpole, bisecting the entire cemetery in two directions at right angles. It was at the crossroads of these flags that I met two old guys, brothers I learned later, walking up and down the rows of flagpoles, stopping at each one to look at something on each pole.
They told me that each pole had a little nametag on it, memorializing a veteran from this little town and its surrounding countryside who had died. Each little tag had the vet's name, dates of birth and death, branch of service and rank. Many of the tags also had "KIA" added, to denote a soldier killed in action.
Now these two old brothers had both served in the army. One brother did a standard hitch in the early 60's and was stateside for his four years. The other was a retired lifer, living on his meager veteran's pension, who joined in the mid 60's and served through the first Gulf War. He'd had many assignments, including three years in the frozen regions north of Bethel, Alaska to his last hitch in Saudi Arabia providing engineering support for troops in Kuwait and the deserts of southern Iraq. These two guys seemed to know almost every name on every flagpole, and the ones they didn't know personally, they knew their families.
All those soldiers, all those flags stretching off into the distance almost to forever, all from this tiny little town in central Missouri.
We chatted for quite some time and, eventually the talk turned to the state of our armed forces today, and what they are being asked to do in our name. Now these two old guys aren't scholars or historians or even very well educated men, but they know right from wrong and they believe, and aren't afraid to say, that what our country is doing in Iraq is wrong. Very wrong.
Said the older brother, "It's bullshit is what it is! There is no plan, No good reason to even be there, no way to win and no way to get out. Worse than 'Nam in that way. There weren't even terrorists there until we got there. Now, Afghanistan, maybe. We had reasons to go there, but even there we have no way out that makes any sense. But Iraq is bullshit"
We walked along past a few more flags and came to one that said its soldier was born in 1982 and KIA 2006. The three of us stopped at that one and stood there for a minute in silence. Then one of the old vets whispered, "Oh, God, I know his Dad. Fuckin' Iraq. That kid died for fuckin' nothin, that's what I think." His brother added, "We gotta' change this goddam country. I'm just praying it's not too late."
I had no words to add to that, nor any reason or any way to say any more.
Oh, I did eventually leave that place yesterday and continued my ride to the old covered bridge. It was lonely and beautiful and stately, as I knew it would be.
I thought of the thousands of people who had used it to cross the little creek over which it stands like sentinel to the past hundred years or so. Maybe some of them were on their way Over There, or to Iwo Jima, or to Korea, or to VietNam. Maybe some of them were on their way to a cemetery to lay a wreath on the grave of a kid or a brother or a dad who never made it home.
I thought about my dad and how maybe he was at the same time both right and wrong about the day we now call Veteran's Day. I think we have lost some of the day's original purpose commemorating the 11th Hour of The 11th Day of the 11th Month, and the purpose and the horrors of that Great War. But now it's a day to remember all of the men and women who give of a portion of their lives, and the many thousands of them who gave up their very lives in our name, even when the cause is very wrong.
View from the bridge
I also thought about next November and a bridge to take our country back.
Light at the end of our tunnel