EARN THIS. EARN IT!

 

Captain Miller and Private Ryan

Observations on Veteran’s Day 2021

Veterans Day was established on November 11 to recognize all veterans who honorably served in the U.S. military.  It acknowledges the armistice ending WWI which took effect on 11-11-1918 at 11:00 am.  Ed Rees. a congressman from Emporia, Kansas and a contemporary of my grandfather Ed Davis from Emporia, introduced a bill to make the date a federal holiday.  It was signed into law in 1954 by another Kansas native, President Eisenhower.

My great uncle returned home to Kansas suffering the ill effects of the trench gas of WWI and two uncles never recovered from the horrors of war suffered in the Pacific campaign of WWII, leaving my grandparents with the distinction of being Gold Star parents.

I graduated college and immediately began working as an Industrial Engineer at a Hercules solid rocket propellant plant at the outset of the Vietnam War.  My draft papers arrived as the war was winding down and were subsequently cancelled, so I was never exposed to war combat.  Just returning to the D-Day invasion and the fateful battle of Ramelle at the end of the renowned film, Saving Private Ryan, on the cusp of another Veterans Day remembrance was enough of an emotional roller coaster that I cannot imagine what any veteran experienced in actual combat.

The greatest generation that lived through the Great Depression and won WWII is now all but gone.  I witnessed a deplaning honor flight in Washington DC years ago and it was very emotional.  Many were just then beginning to tell their story.  And it would be a great travesty to forget their immense sacrifice.  Every generation has their own unique challenges and one of ours is to constantly remind ourselves that freedom is but one generation away from being lost.  And freedom is not free.

Captain Miller and his band of brothers we sent on a mission after D-Day to locate and bring back Private James Ryan, whose three brothers had all been killed in action.  He had been ordered to return to his mother’s side on an Iowa farm as her only surviving son.  The film opens with an elderly Private Ryan visiting the Normandy Cemetery at the cross of Captain Miller who saved Ryan’s life but lost his.  Captain Miller’s dying words to Ryan were “James.  Earn this.  Earn it.”  The gut-wrenching response at the grave site as his family stood aside was “I’ve tried to live my life the best that I could.  I hope it was enough.”  The film switches back to this scene at the end when Ryan’s wife approaches and he implores her “Tell me I’m a good man.”  His wife replies, “You are.”

Small acts of decency in the hellish horrors of combat can be the only saving grace of humanity.  On the 11/11/2021 observation of Veteran’s Day, may we all understand the sacrifice that has carried us to this day. 

And vow to “Earn This.  Earn It!” 

OPENING SCENE:

https://youtu.be/0HUf68gFGEE

ENDING SCENE:

https://youtu.be/IZgoufN99n8

TWO BROTHERS LOST TO WAR AFTER THE ARMISTICE

Floyd (L), Friend, Lewis (R), New Guinea

Gold Star Flag, Emporia, KS

My nephew Mike Davis recently acquired a box of documents at a family reunion in Kansas that was primarily collected by my grandmother Davis who had three sons that were immediately called into service along with hundreds of thousands of their countrymen in WWII.  Mike assembled all of this family treasure into scrap books along with other supplemental research.  When I recently received the book on these three sons, I was immediately surprised by seeing a small surviving flag that I knew was special.  I was just a young child during the war, so my recollection of events is weak, but I do vividly remember the small flag with three stars that our grandmother proudly hung in her front window.  Two of the stars represented her sons Floyd in the army and Johnny who was assigned to a destroyer escort, while the third silver star honored uncle Lewis who was assigned to the 251^st Hospital group and didn’t survive the horrors of the war.  Our grandmother kept newspaper clippings of all the local young recruits that went off to war and was dedicated to the work of the Gold Star Mothers organization.  One of those young men was Harold A. Spatz from nearby Lebo, Kansas who flew on the infamous Doolittle raid over Tokyo.  When his plane along with the others ran out of fuel on their return he was captured by the Japanese and executed by firing squad on October 15, 1942, the day I was born.

My Uncle Floyd Davis arrived in the Pacific Theater in 1942 with the 8^th Fighter Control Squadron and remained there to witness our US brass flying to secure Japan’s surrender in 1945.  Their mission was to set up and man the new radar equipment that had been developed in England to detect incoming enemy planes and coordinate the US 8^th Fighter Squadron planes’ response.  Mike also found a book written by J.C. Stanaway & L.J. Hickey titled Attack and Conquer about the 8^th fighter group and the control squadron.  Soon after arriving in Australia, the radar control squadron was assigned to set up a defensive radar position atop a mountain off the SW coast of New Guinea.  Before long they spotted an invading fleet of seven troop barges close to their position.  They were able to radio in for air support which sank all the barges but not before about 400 troops had made it ashore.  The men were ordered to destroy their equipment and get the hell out of there.  It took an arduous sixteen days of maneuvering on foot through quicksand, rivers and thick jungle growth while enduring lacerations, fungus and malaria before they could be rescued.  We don’t know if Floyd was on this mission, but we do know he was there at that time and contracted malaria on the islands.  Most veterans didn’t discuss much about the war.

Uncle Lewis also found himself on the island of New Guinea working with the destroyed minds and bodies of innumerable young men at a makeshift hospital.  They both were amazed when they discovered that they had traveled on totally separate secret paths around the world in the midst of a world war and were only about thirty miles apart!  Lewis was able to get a short pass to visit his brother and they wrote back to the states that they had a great reunion with some of Floyd’s squad.

Both young men survived the war and were close to the Japanese surrender on the battleship Missouri.  Louis reenlisted and was assigned to a post in Georgia.  An investigation reported that after falling asleep on a noisy train in the dead of night he awoke from what could have been a frightening nightmare with the sound of planes strafing incoming wounded and he bolted outside to his death.  Floyd returned safely back to Kansas but never recovered from the alcohol that consumed his body in the midst of the jungle warfare and he eventually succumbed to it.  The unimaginable circumstance that ripped these young men from life on an American farm in the heartland and deposited them in the middle of a Pacific island jungle hell didn’t take their lives then, but it held on until it succeeded.  

After reflecting, I realized that the horrific experience for Floyd and Lewis had to create a PTSD result which nobody was prepared to acknowledge or treat at that time.  May they and their mother now be united in peace.         

 

 

A MOSES LEADER

MOSES, FDR, World Leaders

June 6, 2019  D-Day Seventy Fifth Anniversary

A “Moses leader’ is metaphorically referred to as someone who capably leads his people through an extremely difficult situation safely to the other side.  My personal business experience revealed that it generally takes a different style of leadership to guide a company through trying times of survival versus one who takes the baton and leads the surviving company into more prosperous quarters. 

Moses was one of the greatest Biblical leaders of the Old Testament and led the Israelites out of Egyptian captivity into the Judean desert for forty years seeking the “promised land” in Canaan.  Franklin D. Roosevelt led the United States as president into his fourth term through the Great Depression and World War II. 

Historians and political scientists consistently rank FDR as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century and consider him along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as our three greatest presidents.  His biographer Jean Edward Smith wrote that “He lifted himself from a wheelchair to lift the nation from its knees.”  Moses is mentioned more often in the New Testament than any other Old Testament figure.  He along with Elijah is present in Jesus’ transfiguration on a high mountain.  He lifted the people of Israel out of slavery into a hardened nation of consequence.

Moses led the people to the banks of the Jordan River in sight of the promised land.  He passed his authority to Joshua and then went up to the top of Pisgah on Mount Nebo where he died at the age of one hundred and twenty.  FDR was in declining health as World War II was drawing to a close and traveled to Warm Springs, Georgia for rehabilitation and rest where he died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 63.  His successor, President Truman, declared victory in Europe the following month, followed by the surrender of Japan in another four months.

Ironically, both of these great figures in human history were brought through trying times as they led their people to the brink of the promised land and were permitted a brief view of their ultimate goal before their life expired.  And then another personality led the people into the next phase of human history.

FLOWER OF REMEMBRANCE

Red Remembrance Poppy, Jamestown, NC

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow,
between the crosses, row on row,
that mark our place; and in the sky,
the larks, still bravely singing, fly,
scarce heard amid the guns below.
-- In Flander’s Fields by John McCrae

“Honor the Dead by Helping the Living”

Memorial weekend is a great beginning to the summer beach days in the sun with outdoor grilling and good times culminating with Labor Day to bookend the season. But the blooming poppy in my backyard garden on this overcast day with a tropical storm on the doorstep gives us all pause to remember the reason for the holiday. Memorial Day was created to remember the men and women who died while serving this great country while Veterans Day celebrates the service of all military veterans. It also gives us all pause to remember those loved souls who have gone before us.

Whenever I see a poppy flower I’m always reminded of my grandmother who all of us grandkids called Mom. She proudly displayed a gold star in her front picture window like many others in our central Kansas town. The practice was started in World War I when families hung Service Flags in their windows. A blue star on the flag represented any family member serving in the military during a conflict and it was replaced by a gold star if that loved one died. My grandmother and our family tragically knew that grief along with Grace Seibold of Washington, D.C. who lost her son in WWI. Grace realized that self-contained grief is self-destructive, so she organized a group consisting solely of those special mothers whose sons had lost their lives in military service and named that group the Gold Star Mothers.

The Gold Star Mothers held regular meetings which we would call support groups today. I distinctly remember my grandmother dressing up and never missing her Gold Star meetings. I didn’t understand the full meaning of those gatherings, and her profound grief, until much later in life. And I remember my sister and me standing on a Main Street corner with Mom passing out VFW Buddy Poppies to shoppers. These small artificial flowers are made by disabled and needy veterans in VA hospitals and other locations. You do not sell them, but the donations from those that accept the poppies are returned to these veterans along with widows and orphans of veterans. I do believe that Mom suggested a five cent donation when we were asked, however. These red poppies were inspired by the WWI poem In Flanders Fields. We always looked forward to accompanying Mom on those ventures, never suspecting that she was modeling a lifetime of partnering with others to help heal the world and us too.

And she was also modeling a behavior of partnering with our Creator to always try to bring something good out of a tragic situation when a loved one does not emerge from one of the devastating storms of life.

BIBLICAL ANSWERS

Lincoln and Generals, Wikipedia

One of my favorite scenes from the classic movie, The Longest Day, about the Normandy invasion that turned the tide in WWII was two flashes from both sides of the war. When queried about the critical outcome of the battle, an allied commander confidently replied that “God is on our side”. Then the scene immediately shifts to the German Third Reich commander who responds to the same question with the same reply. Obviously, one of the two commanders is deadly wrong. Anti-abolitionists in the 1860’s used Ephesians 6:5 to defend the slavery cause using the literal word which admonished, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling”. But I like the response of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War who famously responded differently, “My concern is not whether God is on our side—my greatest concern is to be on God’s side”. Both history and our inherent sense of values show us that slavery was indefensible.

The answers don’t necessarily lie in a literal interpretation of many of the Biblical writings set in the context of the ancient Jewish world, but in the context of scriptural values, especially those taught to us by Jesus in the New Testament when a new covenant between God and us human beings was established. The ancient Bible wasn’t written as a definitive science book either, but modern science is revealing the brilliance of a divine creative mind in discoveries such as the new DNA codes. It is good to find our values in Biblical writings VS our contemporary cultural environment, but we should exercise God given common sense and reflective contemplation for our answers. The truth found in these living writings transcends cultures and time periods. God doesn’t choose sides as much as he strengthens and protects those who seek truth and relationship, e.g., I believe you’re wasting your breath praying for a victory for just about anything, but seeking strength, guidance and protection could be useful.