Friday, August 02, 2019

Veterans For Peace Archives-2018- Reclaim Armistice Day On The 100th Anniversary Of The End Of World War I




Veterans For Peace Archives-2018- Reclaim Armistice Day On The 100th Anniversary Of The End Of World War I


By Allan Jackson

Maybe the European commemorations of Armistice Day 2018, the 100th anniversary of the war to end all wars which fell very short on that score in 1918 were more circumspect, more meaningful, more to the bone and marrow of that troubled continent’s history but there were some forces in America, some organizations like Veterans for Peace and Veterans Peace Action who strove mightily to make sure that November 11th was properly observed. Hey, you say that is Veterans Day, a day when we honor our veterans. And that is unfortunately what the day has morphed into since about the 1950s when the day’s name was changed in America. Not so Europe where there are still too many bones and wounds, too many fields of white crosses and cratered earth to forget that bloodletting and the subsequent one after that war failed to end all wars. (Too the savage decimation of a whole generation of young men who could have done more in peace than that wound up doing in war). So many groups, not all that large, were prepared on the anniversary to reclaim the day when the bloody war in Europe ended in 1918.

Among those who were most active in the reclamation process were Veterans for Peace activists and longtime friends Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton (dating back to their respective arrests in Washington in `1971 when each with their respective cohorts for their own reasons decide that if the government was not going to end the Vietnam War which must have slipped the minds of those who touted WWI as the finish they would stop the government. An odd but very honorable way to start a lifetime friendship). Strangely it was Sam who was the most fervent for the change back to the historic roots since he was a supporter of VFP and not a member having been exempted from the draft in the 1960s due to extreme family hardship after his drunken father died early and suddenly of a heart attack and he was th sole remaining male to fend for his mother and four sisters and not Ralph a decorated Vietnam veteran who saw plenty of bloody action in the Central Highlands.

The reason that Sam took the lead here was actually personal. Anna Riley, his maternal grandmother’s oldest brother Frank, Frank O’Brian had been killed during the war in service to the AEF. They had erected in town, on a town square a memorial plague honoring Frank and his service which when the switch to Veterans Day occurred was changed to honor all the town veterans. This broke his grandmother’s heart and that of her sisters as well.

So behind Sam’s general motivation to have some historic truth lies the truth that his uncle’s service and death was not appreciated. Sam, with Ralph in tow though got every church in town (and a few neighboring churches, Universalist-Unitarian, UU of course) to not only ring the bells of their churches at the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month but call out a “Presente,” a sign of respect for the fallen Frank O’Brian. Grandma Anna would have been proud.    





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