Memorial Day

Next to Christmas, Memorial Day was my favorite holiday. Not the least because many combatants from two recent wars and a few from the war to end all wars lived in the village and surrounding area. The memories of World War II and the Korean War were still vivid.  Almost all thirty to fifty to fifty year old males and a considerable number of females in the county were veterans of one of one of those two conflicts.  There were also a goodly number who had served or at least remembered World War I.  So the American Legion was thriving and Memorial Day was honored sincerely, a day of deep emotion and gratitude by the entire community. In the days before bingo and pull-tabs took away its soul, the American Legion saw to it that everyone wore a paper poppy on their lapel.

The one downside of Memorial Day was that school art classes devoted the entire month of May to making “Poppy Posters".  Each grade’s efforts were judged and awarded ribbons by the American Legion. The winning posters were displayed in store windows all over town. I was artistically challenged so I never had a prayer of being one of the Memorial Day poster winners.  I aspired however.

Memorial Day began with a program in the town hall, opening with the Pledge of Allegiance and generally included an invited speaker with some WWII credentials and others offering patriotic music.  It played to a packed house.  I sat impatiently through this because I knew what was to follow.  When the program concluded, the honor guard, consisting of 10-12 vets from all the services, who had managed to pour themselves into their old military uniforms, would rise from the front rows of the auditorium, shoulder arms and form rank.  They assembled on the street outside the town hall and marched to Frankie’s cadence. “Hut - Hut - Hut 2-3-4. Column right, march.” The destination was the skating rink where rows of white crosses decorated with flowers and poppies had been placed. Kids would run along side the marchers and then wait in flushed expectation as an emotional vet read the names of those killed in action during the three conflicts.  The honor guard would then fire the three rounds in the 21 gun salute to the fallen.  

Of course my mission was to recover those spent shell casings.  Unfortunately, every kid in Lowry had the same idea.  The mad rush after the honor guard had left resembled a rugby scrum. Competing with Big Time in that melee couldn’t have been worse than actual combat.  I was pretty scrawny so I was happy to come up with one or two casings with only a bloody nose or broken glasses.  One glorious year I grabbed a mis-fire that still had its red wax sealed powder intact.  I could have traded that “live blank” for twenty empty casings.  Never did though.

After the program, there was usually a big family gathering at Grandma’s house with a big meal followed by outside games with the cousins while the adults spent the entire afternoon at the dining room table "discussing things".  My grandparents had 4 sons who served in the navy during WWII and a brother in the army during WWI.  But war experiences were never discussed.  I suspect there may have been talks between 4 brothers, but regretfully, I never got first hand accounts except for reading formal war logs of the ships they were on.

I had an obsession with the Pacific theatre of WWII.  My father served on a battleship in the Pacific, but did not talk about it. But I had practically memorized his ship’s war log that chronicled the island-hopping path of the big ship. I knew Peleliu from Truk, Mindinao from Luzon. I was pretty cocky when I could wear his dress white sailor hat around town.  

Then CBS began televising the Victory at Sea episodes, which further convinced me that the Navy had single-handedly won the war on both fronts.  I was glued to the TV set on Sunday afternoon from 4:30 to 5:00 to inhale those programs. Next to Lassie, it was the best thing on TV.  Unfortunately, the nearest TV station was 130 miles away and reception was at best, “unpredictable”.  So often I watched marines assaulting Mt. Suribachi or ships attacked by kamikazes through blizzards of snow.  

Almost all the gang had fathers that were WWII vets so the army vs. navy arguments were frequent and heated.  And "playing war" was a common activity. To me infantry service, in Italy of all places, amounted to shore patrol.  I was later humbled to discover Sicily, Salerno, Anzio and Monte Cassino.  

War was glamorous.  How ignorant.