Over the years, I have written many articles about veterans, have written many letters to government officials, Congress, etc. about veterans. As a well-known veteran, Dick Carter, said to me before he died, “Tom, you are just wasting your time. People don't care.” I may be wasting my time, writing and speaking, trying to change the world, but I refuse to let the world change me.
Nelle Harper Lee only wrote one published book, To Kill A Mockingbird, but it has had a greater influence on American society than perhaps any other book written in America. The most memorable line in the book, to this writer, said by an old black man sitting outside of the courthouse, “we have reached the place that only children cry.”
This 100% disabled, service-connected, totally blind veteran's eyes often weep in the middle of the night when realizing that the country for which so many gave so much, both military and civilian, has totally changed in my lifetime. A country that became great because it was good, now has become perverse.
On this Veteran's day, I could write about the time I was at Duke University hospital directly across the street from the veteran's hospital, undergoing eye surgery after many others. It was during the Vietnam conflict, battle lines had been drawn between those who supported and those who opposed the war, particularly in the university communities of Duke and Chapel Hill. A black female nurse came into my room, told me how much she despised the military and spit in my face. Of course the Veteran's Administration did nothing, and neither did Duke University hospital. Dr. Banks Anderson Jr. assured me and my mother that it would not happen again.
I could talk about the one friend I knew who survived the Bataan Death March, the 60 mile march in 1942, in which the Japanese with brutality killed 10,000 of the 75,000 Americans and Filipinos. These prisoners of war were forced march with extreme brutality, beheading, throat-cutting, starvation were just some of the atrocities used. He told me he survived because he felt that God wanted him to have a child to leave behind in this world, and he and his wife had never had children. Later, he had two fine sons. I would be at a medical meeting, (I believe every bone in the man's body had been broken) as he would enter the meeting room, everyone knew it was him, because he always dragged his feet, trying to get around. Immediately, everyone in the room would stand, every proceeding would come to a halt, everyone knew a hero had entered the room.
In the attached commentary (#469 – Mamie) about my neighbor Mamie Pedigo, I briefly mention that her husband Edward was a veteran of WWI. I never knew him, he lived a few years after his return from the war. Mamie had given me an article which he had written from Europe to the News & Observer, Raleigh, but like many things in my house, it has evidently disappeared. Anyway, in the article, I remember that he wrote a poem in which he said that if he ever returned to the “tar heel state”, he would have to be pried from a pine tree, because he would hold onto an NC tar heel pine trees as long as he could.
Mamie gave me Ed's dictionary, picture enclosed, along with his signature. After he returned from WWI, he seldom went out of the house. A mental cripple from the war, although he never receive a dime in disability, he spent his time working in the flowerbeds in the backyard, or writing on an old type writer, stories about the war. Of course, as is the case with this writer, people do not want to know the truth. He had been in the thick of battle in France, had witnessed the horrors and devastation of war.
She said, “he has never forgiven himself for not being able to do more for the victims.” He worked for a field hospital, which at that time in history, were mostly located in shell-destroyed buildings. He spent much of his time in the basement of a large building which they had converted into a hospital, trying to patch up women and children. She said, “he has an animosity toward the neighbors and others in this town who have no idea about the horrors of war. Who, were willing to send young men to such a cauldron, horror-pit of destruction, while remaining comfortable at home, themselves. Limited by drugs and equipment, doctors and nurses, the technicians did what they could for the suffering humanity brought into the place, along with their fallen comrades.
Ed and Mamie did not have children, both were the only children of their parents, themselves. She told me that she had his casket brought back to house for the funeral, a handful of neighbors were there, a veterans groups sent some pallbearers. She was convinced, as most of us were convinced that flag-waving Americans are only affected by war if it affected them.
Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg said, “the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.” One of my uncles, WWII veteran, leaving home for the war as a child, never having been away from home before, told me of his homesickness, so many thousands of miles away. He told his commanding officer, “I will die if I cannot go home.” He was told that he could not go home, he, nor anyone else.
On this veteran's day, we remember what those living and dead have given, not only the veteran, but the family of the veteran, as I have stumbled around as a blind veteran, my attitude has been colored by remembering my old grandparents, my mother's parents, who tried to keep the family farm going while their only son was in combat in the South Pacific during WWII. There are not words on this day, or any day, that could give sufficient gratitude for this type service.
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