For far too many Americans, Veterans Day is just one of those holidays when the banks shut down and the mail doesn’t come.
Try looking a war veteran in the eye and telling him that.
On Veterans Day –– Monday, Nov. 11 — we formally honor the military men and women who risked death to answer the nation’s call. In a time when the country has bogged itself down in a prolonged and hugely unpopular conflict in Iraq, it may be hard to separate the war from the warriors.
Conscience requires us to do exactly that.
Our cover story this week profiles Jewish War Veterans in the Bay Area. It’s largely a senior citizens organization, where a 71-year-old vet is considered “the young guy.” All the World War I vets are gone now, with the World War II vets swiftly joining their ranks. Those who remain understandably lament their dwindling numbers and the lack of new recruits.
Oddly, cultural myths about Jews and a perceived avoidance of military service persist. These should be thoroughly discredited by now. Whenever the nation has called its young men and women to battle, American Jews have stepped up. They have bled and died for this country, and they continue to do so today.
And if anyone still clings to the myth that Jews can’t fight, they need not look solely to Israel’s battle-hardened military to be disabused of that notion. They can talk to members of Bay Area JWV Posts 60, 152 and 688.
Earlier this year, j. wrote about lifelong Petaluma resident Art Cader, who received the Distinguished Flying Cross six decades after putting his B-24 Liberator between swarming Japanese fighters with machine guns blazing and the white parachutes of downed American airmen fluttering helplessly toward the South China Sea.
After Cader’s story hit his hometown newspaper, he relates, “People would stop me. And all they wanted to say was ‘thank you.’”
It was emotionally overwhelming for Cader, but he deserved the gratitude.
So, thank you, Art Cader. Thank you, Richard Brown, who told us that, after his experiences in Korea and Vietnam, he will never pick up a gun and go hunting again. Thank you, John Levin, who can still hear the shrieks of his dying friends on the beaches of Normandy. And thank you, veteran Miriam White, who has spent thousands of hours at Palo Alto’s V.A. Hospital, tending to young Iraq soldiers returning without their arms, legs or sanity.
We owe you more than we will ever know. Thank you all.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California