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VFW Post 6683
John W. Brock
Enterprise, Alabama
I was a Soldier: That's the way it is, that's what we were and are! We put it,
simply, without any swagger, without any brag, in those four plain words.
We speak them softly, just to ourselves. Others may have forgotten.
They are a manifesto to mankind; speak those four words anywhere in the
world -- yes, anywhere -- and many who hear will recognize their meaning.
They are a pledge. A pledge that stems from a document which said: "I
solemnly
Swear", "to protect and defend" and goes on from there, and from a
Flag called "Old Glory".
Listen, and you can hear the voices echoing through them, words that sprang
white-hot from bloody lips, shouts of "medic", and whispers of "Oh God!”
forceful words of "Follow Me". If you can't hear them, you weren't, if you
can you were.
"Don't give up the ship! Fight her till she dies... Damn the torpedoes! Go
ahead!
. Do you want to live forever? . . . Don't cheer, boys; the poor
devils are dying."
Laughing words, and words cold as January ice, words that when spoken, were
meant, "Wait till you see the whites of their eyes". The echo's of I was
a Soldier.
You can hear the slow cadences at Gettysburg, or Arlington honoring not a
man, but a Soldier, perhaps forgotten by his nation...Oh! Those Broken
Promises.
You can hear those echoes as you have a beer at the "Post", walk in a
parade, go to The Wall, visit a VA hospital, hear the mournful sounds of
tap, or gaze upon the white crosses, row upon row.
But they aren't just words; they're a way of life, a pattern of living, or a
way of dying.
They made the evening, with another day's work done; supper with the wife
and kids; and no Gestapo snooping at the door and threatening to kick your
teeth in.
They gave you the right to choose who shall run our government for us, the
right to a secret vote that counts just as much as the next fellow's in the
final tally; and the obligation to use that right, and guard it and keep it
clean.
They prove the right to hope, to dream, to pray, the obligation to serve.
These are some of the meanings of those four words, meanings we don't often
stop to tally up or even list.
Only in the stillness of a moonless night, or in the quiet of
a Sunday
afternoon, or in the thin dawn of a new day, when our world is close about
us, do they rise up in our memories and stir in our sentient hearts.
And we are remembering Wake Island, and Bataan, Inchon, and Chu Lai, Knox, Rucker
and Benning, Great Lakes and Paris Island, Travis and Chanute, and many
other places long forgotten by our civilian friends.
They're plain words, those four. Simple words.
You could carve them on stone; you could carve them on the mountain ranges.
You could sing them, to the
tune of "Yankee Doodle."
But you needn't. You needn't do any of those things, for those words are
graven in the hearts of Veterans, they are familiar to 24,000,000 tongues,
every sound and every syllable. If you must write them, put them on my
Stone.
But when you speak them, speak them softly, proudly, I will hear you, for I
too,
I was a Soldier, I AM A VETERAN.
Memorial Day is also known Poppy Day
Red Paper Poppies are a symbol of the war dead because real poppies bloomed all over the
battlefield graveyards of France. They have now become a traditional sale item for the
Veterans of Foreign Wars to raise money for disabled
and destitute vets. The first official Poppy Sale; nation wide was in 1922.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the dead, Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not
sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
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