Remembering Veterans Day

Each year, on the 11th day of the 11th month, the people of this nation pause to pay tribute to our veterans and their families. We thank them for their service, while we pray for our heroic dead, who, in the words of the great Civil War Gen. John A. Logan, made their breasts a barricade between our country and its foes.

In anticipation of this holiday, I challenged myself to remember my first parade. WWII had just ended, my father had not yet returned from the fighting in Europe. I stood next to my mother watching men in uniform 4, 8 and 16 across, three times as tall as I, marching down Main Street, USA, echoes of brass bands playing in the distance, people cheering, clapping each time the skeleton of a new regiment crossed our path. I remember troops passing who’d fought in the Spanish American War, 1899, dozens of companies who’d fought in World War I, 1918, and then a few of the wounded from WWII, and those who were then serving in the home front. Among those in the crowd were parents and grandparents, brothers, sisters, veterans and veteranstobe, and those that would perish in wars yet named: the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, the first Iraq War, a second Iraq War, Afghanistan, a war against ISIS. Thinking about these times comes hard, time gradually erasing the details of scores of flagwaving parades in the course of a long life.

Pause for one moment to contemplate this solemn occasion. And, also contemplate that our goal is peace, not war. Remember what Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world — indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Poignantly, some wars end in peace. And our goal must always be peace without having to lose lives. One hopes that Veterans Day can be set aside to show respect to those who gave their lives during armed conflict by opening a conversation that focuses attention away from war, rather than its propagation.

Joseph R. Carvalko Jr.

Milford