Beech Tree News Network

With Veterans’ Day coming up, how does one begin to say that which needs be said about the men and women who have fought our wars? There are no words that suffice, no éclat’s enough, no medals tucked away in some drawyer or a headstone in some cemetery---these can remind, but not recompense.
Perhaps Britain’s Churchill came pretty close when he said about his own forces, “Never have so many owed so much to so few.”
Recently Bett and I attended a 1966 butler County High School Reunion.  Most of the young men present were my former students.  The majority of them had served in the Vietnam War.  Some still carried old wounds.  But to a man, they were all cheerful, no complaining.  Some even joked about the fact, “They should have ZIGGED when they ZAGGED.”  Where do we get such young people as those?
Truth is, we’ve always had them around to answer the call to arms.  Granted, some went willingly, some didn’t.  BUT THEY WENT.  As in all wars, many didn’t come back alive.  Many did, but never to be exactly the same after the experience.  Some went back to the same jobs, some didn’t.  Back in my hometown a veteran WWII Combat Pilot drove a milk truck when he came home. 
One hometown man came back from World War II with his hand sewn to his stomach.  It remained that way until both skins grew together.  After healing was complete the hand and stomach were surgically separated.
One guy I knew limped the rest of his life.  He drove a bread truck.  “I jumped into a fox hole,” he said.  I thought I got all of me in, but evidently I left this bum leg hanging out too far.”
A school classmate of mine had a brother and an uncle killed on the same day in Germany.
Our town jeweler and watchmaker was a B-17 bomber pilot in WWII.  When he was up in his 80’s, I saw him have his wife stop the car near the Greenville airport where there was a DC-3 (C-47) doing an engine run-up.  He stood holding on to the car door, listening for the longest.  No doubt he recognized the sound.  The C-47 (DC-3) had the very same engines as his old B-17 bomber he flew in the war.  Only, the B-17 had four instead of two… same make; same horsepower (R-1830 PRAT and WHITNEYS).
During the Civil War, soldiers would often ask each other, “Have you seen the elephant?” This meant, “Have you been in battle yet?”  This took on the connotation that once a person had been to the circus and seen an elephant, he was afterward and forevermore a changed individual, never the same again.  Battle produced the same effect.
“Three little sisters; three little sisters, all stayed home to read a magazine.  One loved a soldier; one loved a sailor, and one loved a man in the Marines.” ( a popular WWII song)
Kindest Regards…