Veteran’s Day as a kid always meant a parade down Van Ness Street in Fresno that was a cross between soldiers marching, band’s playing, and Christmas being promoted by the stores that then existed downtown. Downtown existed with Penny’s, Wards, Newberry’s, Grants, all the major shoe stores and grand old theaters playing matinees and double features.
Right: Our parents at Mare Island
I was always aware of Veteran’s Day because both our mother and father were World War II Veterans.
Our father, John Belanger, was a Marine in the V Amphibious Corps. They met at the main gate of Mare Island where our father was Sergeant of the Guards. He picked our mother out of a crowded jitney full of WAVES for “interrogation” and the rest was history.
Left: Our dad in uniform with Corporal's stripes
Right: The V Amphibious Corp patch
Our mother was a Pharmacists Mate (Hospital Corpsman) in the Navy’s WAVES and was stationed at Mare Island Naval Hospital, assigned to the Amputee Ward. Mare Island was the amputee center for the Pacific Theater. Hospital ships arrived and the WAVES and doctors worked non-stop until every man was situated and a course of treatment begun.
Pictured with my mother, above right, is Mary Jane Isley, at Mare Island Naval Hospital.
My mother’s father, Donald Dennie, served in World War I, in France, with Mac Arthur’s 42nd Rainbow Division, 150th Field Artillery, (Indiana National Guard) D Battery. The 150th served at Champaign-Marne, Asine-Marne, St. Mihiel, the Argonne, Lorraine, Champaign and Champaign-Lorraine, for which they received battle streamers. [A series of silk ribbons attached to a units flag that signify battles and campaigns they have participated in]
The Division suffered heavy losses of more than 12,000 casualties in 264 days of combat operations out of 457 days of front line service. Grandfather Dennie personally suffered exposure to mustard gas and his lungs were ruined.
In his life back home Grandfather Dennie was part owner of a VFW Hall in Ft. Wayne and enjoyed tending the bar, not to drink (per our mother) but because he enjoyed the work. It only took 58 years to extract that information from our mother.
Left: Pop's boot camp "Dear Mom" portrait
Below Right: Mom's "Dear Pop" portrait
But did I really appreciate Veteran’s Day and what it meant? No, not truly until later in life. It was often a day off from work or school. Like Memorial Day, a day when the stores ran huge sales and if you hurried, you could save 30-50% off that stuff you really didn’t need to buy. Don’t even get me started on Macy’s full page, flag waving, Veteran’s Day ad campaign.
What changed my mind? A number of things actually, for I never served in the military except as a Major’s Dependent and never had to truly worry about a husband or brother in a field of war. I had friends who served and came back “different”, injured or not at all.
My first husband volunteered for Vietnam and wanted to serve as a door gunner in helicopter gunships. But, he had too much training in ejection seats and missiles. He came home as whacky as when he left. But I didn’t have to worry about him when he was there for he wasn’t an issue in my life except as someone I knew in the neighborhood.
My dad rarely said much about his time as a Marine. He was a garrison force Marine on Midway after the big battle. Ironically, Joel’s father was a crewman on Avenger’s that were stationed at Midway at the same time. Garrison forces had to fight the battle of boredom, not invasions.
After Midway, Pop was stationed at Mare Island and then was sent to Okinawa for the invasion as we understand it. Mom can’t really recall the chain of events. She says he left, wrote a little and then came back to Mare Island and the rest was history. He had the honor of serving as Sergeant of the Color Guard at the first meeting in San Francisco, of what would become the United Nations.
We heard little about Okinawa and he apparently didn’t stay out there long. We know he spent time in Hawaii as he refused to ever set foot in Hawaii again saying “I didn’t lose anything there so I don’t see any reason to go back”. Maybe it was Camp Tarawa or maybe it was Pearl Harbor as his V Corps was reportedly assigned to both areas.
Left: Tanned, Sgt. stripes and now a mustache
Below Left: Estelle and Charles McNair, Joel's parents.
Pop was adamant that my brother, Pat, would never go to Vietnam, a war he thought was wrong. Did anyone listen to the men who knew war firsthand? Do they yet?
Mom, though a member of the NRA in high school, hated guns after the war. My dad’s “Trench Art” of brass shell casings fashioned into ashtrays and such, were not allowed to be displayed, and one was relegated to the bottom of a box I found when we cleared her house out. I have had the one piece I found lovingly restored and it is pictured here.
My mother threw her uniform away apparently for I never 
recall seeing it. She put my father’s dress blouse and slacks in the deepest reaches of a closet where I found it last year. She barely tolerated our father teaching us to fire and use pistols, rifles and shotguns, though he did not hunt to speak of.
Over the last 5 years, I have had the honor and duty of accompanying my mother to the VA Hospital in Fresno. It is a sobering experience, yet one I am glad I could take part in. The WW II veterans have gotten fewer and fewer and my mother was one of a very small handful of their “princesses” from World War II service. The care and honor they give her is incomparable.
But three events in my life have truly riveted into place my respect for the Veteran and honoring them every day, not just on Memorial or Veteran’s Days:
In 1984 I ran for judge and spent Memorial Day going to every cemetery event in the Greater Fresno area. Little did I know the F4 Phantom flyovers from the Fresno Air National Guard, led by my big brother Pat, also included my future husband, Joel in the back seat of Pat’s F4.
During each of those events where we honored our fallen soldiers I realized just how fortunate I was to have survived Vietnam with my family intact and World War II with two parents who met as a result and a grandfather who came home from The Great War, alive and well to marry my grandmother. I was all of 34 years of age.
Left: Me, the candidate, talking to Ch. 24 at a cemetary;
Right: Pat climbing in his F4 to do the Memorial Day flyovers
After my marriage to Joel, we went to Ramstein Air Base in Germany for three months of active duty. During one of our weekend trips we went to Bastogne, where the Battle of the Bulge took place in a terrible late snow storm. We visited the memorial there in a freezing sleet and rain storm and the second event unfolded.
We were wearing Gore-Tex and toasty gloves and hats. We had a warm car to 
escape to, then a warm hotel. The food hot and filling. We could leave anytime. It was unimaginable how men spent days and weeks in the war, living not only in the cold of a foxhole, but in non-stop fear and under assault. We, today, cannot take 10 minutes of anxiety without looking for a Xanax.
Left: Joel at the Memorial in Bastonge; Right, below: Sleet at the site
MacRae Jarrett and Frank Creede, two of my friends in life, served there as young
Army soldiers. They wore wet wool and spent the battle in foxholes being shot at. Frank was taken prisoner. When I returned, I made a point of getting in touch with them and thanking them for their service and sacrifice. Mac, a college professor, just passed away. Frank is a retired Superior Court Judge.
We also drove to Paris for Thanksgiving weekend during the TDY assignment—it was rough duty. Along the highway you cannot miss the constant fields of white crosses between the German border and Paris. We stopped at Fort Vaux an underground historical site in Verdun that was a major fighting ground.
The fields of white crosses sober you up pretty quickly as to what happened in this beautiful countryside. But the fort…
Left: Tunnels of Ft. Vaux;
This fort, alone, makes it clear how terrible war really is. The tunnels are sealed as final tombs as the men fought hand to hand combat daily. Lime was sprinkled on the dead, they backed up, backed up and eventually sealed the tunnel. Cans of lime still sit, rotting on the shelves. There is no mistaking the terror and awful conditions men subjected each other to in the name of war in the tunnels Fort Vaux.
The forest around the fort is filled with trees that grow at odd angles. One does not take a walk in the woods around the fort to this day for fear of being blown to bits by almost 100 year old ordinance.
Below: Bunk room of Ft. Vaux
I thought: My grandfather fought in places like this. Though I barely knew the man, I developed more profound respect for him. His dog tags are pictured here, as are my dad’s.
The last event and trip where my appreciation for the Veteran’s place of honor grew even more was Vietnam this past spring. As I have talked about below, my trip with TOP, Tours of Peace, had a profound effect upon me in many ways.
As we traveled through this still distant and very foreign country, I constantly thought of how, 40 years ago, a kid from Des Moines or the Bronx, could slog through a rice paddy, such as I was now seeing, in 100+ heat and humidity; amongst a culture where he not only understood no language, but feared everyone and anyone could kill him; that each step could be a booby trapped last step; who could not be severely affected for life serving in this war. This was not Europe where most battles took place, or Gettysburg, where there was some semblance of familiarity. This was as far away from home as anyone could imagine. We won’t even get into the politics of the war through the years it was waged.
The most compelling part of the trip was spending our Memorial Day at the Son My Vestige Site, also known popularly as My Lai.
I won’t get into the why’s, wherefore’s or rationalizations for My Lai and the slaughter that took place there. It is a blot on our history, but it joins more blots than we lay claim to. Both sides of that war had their bad days for which no one country should be proud or carry a banner of innocence.
In 1998 the Vietnam-American Peace Park was dedicated. This is a 4.5 acre park built by Veterans who fought each other. The effort was led by American veteran Mike Boehm with the assistance of the Madison Quakers. The effort involves recovery and reconciliation and includes a revolving loan fund, local hospital improvements and funds to build a new school. Check out the My Lai Peace Park Project.
The Vestige Site is the actual hamlet where the massacre took place. There is the infamous ditch. The pathways are now cement art, with boot prints, foot and sandal prints, cart tracks and such in a helter skelter pattern. There are statutes and statuary depicting the home sites that remained when the assault ended.
Left: The ditch at My Lai
The bomb shelters are in place. Natalie and I spoke with a woman who, as a child, was at the market when the event occurred. She came home to find she was the only member of her family to still exist. She tends her family’s home site every day. She is pictured below.
We met a woman who still lives near her family home. She is in her 80’s and was wounded, being left for dead in a pile of bodies. The day we met her, she had buried her only grandson, the only son of her surviving son.
The son told us how he survived. He had been working in the field the day before with the family’s water buffalo when the first shelling of the village started. He was hit with a shell, losing his left arm, left leg, and left eye, putting him in a hospital for the next day’s assault on the village. What still moves him, and he still honors, is the water buffalo that died that day. It probably had almost as much, if not more value to the village, than he did at the time.
The tour guide told us the party line account of the atrocities that took place, but, it is clear she softened as she learned from this group of Americans, several of whom fought in Vietnam, that we were shedding tears for all 
involved. We were not, and are not, the terrible Americans she was taught to vilify at this tragic site.
As with any site where life has been taken en masse and needlessly, there is an strange quiet an
d the air is dry and tasteless. The life is sucked out of the site. I have experienced it at Dachau and at the scenes of murders when I was a prosecutor. You can almost smell the copperish scent of death lingering over the area.
So often Veteran’s and Memorial Day are spent doing something innocent, like water skiing, having a BBQ, going to a football game or shopping for a great deal at the Mall. We forget that at one time, for many of us, stores were closed on these days out of respect.
Let us remember we have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan that are being shot, killed, wounded and separated from their families. We have troops in many areas of the world, at risk. Every day someone wonders if their son or daughter is safe, or not. Until they come home, nothing is right with the world.
Those of us who have never been near a battlefield, rushed a pillbox, gone over the wall of a trench with nothing but a khaki shirt for armor, been in a fire fight, slogged through a rice paddy in a country you cannot comprehend waiting to be shot, worked hours on injured soldiers making life and death decisions, served in a submarine, on a surface ship or flown a plane or helicopter over enemy territory, will ever know or appreciate what they who have, have endured.
Let us never forget the victims of Agent Orange, Napalm, atomic bombs or whatever other forms of destruction we have or can set our minds to invent and actually use.
As we sit here, snug in our homes, let us spend some time on Veteran’s Day remembering why we are not at work or not subjected to the will of someone such as Adolf Hitler’s successors in interest. Put down that 50% off item you probably don’t really need and consider what it is about this day that grants you such opportunities.
Let me leave you with these words written by Major Beatrice Hood Stroud, WAC, who served in World War II:
It wasn’t just my brother’s country,
or my husband’s country,
it was my country as well.
And so this wasn’t just their war,
it was my war,
and I needed to serve in it.
Pictured here is my father’s boot camp platoon formed in San Diego as part of the V Corps. As was so typical family members were put together as well as best buddies. My Uncle Harold Waddle is just below my father, circled below. Harold served on Guadalcanal. These men served as well on Iwo Jima, Saipan and most every island invasion in the war. How many besides our father and Uncle made it out alive? If you, or someone you know is in this image, please feel free to contact me.
From Jim Tew:
From my god-father's war journal (no photos) Port Moresby, New Guinea
Lt. Entrekin went to the latrine that afternoon and sat sweating and smoking a cigarette. High above a P38 coughed...it's port engine caught fire and since the starboard engine was already kaput, the airplane turned over into a steep dive. It came down into our company area, tore off the top of the latrine which promptly caught fire. The shack burned to the ground, killing a Lt. Smythe, but leaving Entrekin still alive and his cigarette in place.
One week later the same thing happened, only this time it was Major Goodwin, Entrekin surviving.
He and I spent the balance of the war in Port Moresby with no ill after-effects, but never again did Lt Entrekin have to share the latrine with anyone.
So, there was some [dark] humor amidst the wreckage. Contrast that to the so-called 'greatest war story':
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