My driver stopped near the intersection. He said, the police are holding up traffic because of a funeral. He described everything to me. I knew about the death, it had been on the news. The Church, one of the oldest in the state, used as a hospital during the Civil War was a gathering place for the “blue bloods” of the city. He said they slid the expensive casket out of the hearse and the widow who had followed him to Canada when he fled the city to escape the Vietnam draft, followed the casket into the church along with her daughter who was born in Canada, the two sons who were born after they returned here, grandchildren, etc. I wondered how many of the “well healed” people in the church remembered that he had left his country for Canada rather than to serve in the military. Since his family were people of great wealth, he could live there until the wars end, come back to the city and carry on the family tradition of “blue blood”, aristocratic, “big me, little you”, “country club” pretensions as he professed to love his country and serve his city.
After he had left the city for Canada with the blessings of his wealthy family, his high school sweetheart joined him there, they were married and had their first child in Canada. As was the case with Bill Clinton and so many others who preferred not the wear the uniform of the military service, he lived a life of charades. Always looking down at we mere mortals who were from the poor homes and life was a struggle both in the military and out.
Just a few weeks before, my driver had driven me down to Castle Street, which at one time, here in the city of Wilmington, North Carolina was the center of black commercial establishments. A black friend of mine, who called me often to lament the world conditions as a fellow veteran had told me that he wanted the hearse to drive down Castle Street from the funeral home to the National Cemetery after his final service. And, on that Sunday the hearse drove slowly down Castle Street with the flag covered casket of my friend, the grand finale of his life. His nickname was Weed, called that because he grew so fast as a child. (neither he nor his family realized that the founder of planned parenthood, the promoter of eugenics, Margaret Sanger, called all black people weeds.)
I had come to know Weed through “talk radio”. He knew I was a veteran and he called and paid tribute to me, he would actually weep over the radio in describing how America had treated him as a WWII veteran after combat in the Pacific. He had been reared here in the city. He told how he had shined David Brinkley's shoes as a young shoeshine boy. (Brinkley, famed newscaster was raised and is buried here). He told, how when he returned from the war in uniform he was ordered to the rear of the bus. He told, even though he had spent many years up north in college and working, he was treated with as much bigotry after serving his country as when he was a black boy on the streets here. He would weep telling of how much he wanted to come back here to live and this was the very thing that took him through combat in the pacific.
William Manchester, 100% disabled veteran, biographer of General Douglas MacArthur, has said, “Those who have not known war, have not worn the uniform, have little appreciation of those man enough to defend their country.”
During the Vietnam War, I was still being hospitalized with eye surgery. I am a totally blind 100% disabled veteran of the Korean era. Hospitalized at the VA hospital in Durham, I received surgery directly across the street at the Duke Eye Center. This was at the time of the protesters from UNC-CH (where I graduated) and Duke University. They would protest around the federal facilities such as the VA hospital. While on the second floor corner room of the Duke facility directly across from the VA a black nurse one morning, telling me how much she despised the military, just spat on me. My mother and sister arriving a little later after a long trip were preparing to get me out of the place when Dr Banks Anderson, assured them that such would never happen again.
FREEDOM IS NOT FREE. At my expense, I attended the 25th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion. There are several large military cemeteries in France. The one I visited, had 7,900 white crosses. Again, at my expense, on a world trip I walked into the largest military cemetery in the world in the Philippines which has 18,000 white crosses. There are 126,000 of our finest Americans buried on foreign soil. In Arlington alone, in this country, there are 250,000 buried including some of my relatives. FREEDOM IS NOT FREE.
WWI was the war that was supposed to end all wars. 10 million people were killed in WWI, 21 years later WWII was fought when 60 million were killed. Five years later, in the Korean conflict 55,000 Americans lost their lives. Five years later, the beginnings of the long Vietnam struggle in which 58,000 Americans lost their lives. When you feel of the marble slabs in our nations capital, and run your hand over the engraved names, when you think of the mothers and fathers who gave up sons and daughters, wives and children who gave up a daddy who loved them very much you realize again and again, FREEDOM IS NOT FREE. There has only been a few months, in the history of mankind when a war was not being fought somewhere on the planet. The difference is, they have become more horrible. The DU factor now (depleted uranium) which coats the bullets for greater penetration of armor, suicide bombers and other technology of scientific discoveries (drones, etc) makes war almost unthinkable both for the warriors involved and the civilians.
I have seen the callous attitude in too many VA hospitals and have experienced enough of the worlds ingrates to last the remaining years of my life. A friend of mine, a top notched VA doctor talked with me privately in his private office. He said, “I stopped shedding tears long ago. But last week, I cried again. The aunt of a young man who had just returned from Iraq brought him here to the hospital. He had come home from a VA hospital. He still had wounds that were oozing puss. He had not received the care he should have received, not even antibiotics. I put him in the hospital here and hope to save his life.”
Just this past week, when we here the depressing details of just one medical officer, a Muslim psychiatrist, actually counseling returning veterans not to fight Muslims and then shooting his unarmed fellow soldiers fragging is given a bad name. Children are expelled for making a drawing of a gun in a public school. The elderly in wheel chairs, are abused before boarding a plane. Technology strips us naked at most federal facilities. Yet, that FBI military doctor and certainly his fellow citizens attending his Mosque, knew the hatred of this Army Major who not only wore the gold leaf of rank but the medical caduceus of health care, “to do no harm.” On this Veterans Day, we realize more than ever that political correctness is defeating our country. Character determines destiny. Our destiny is in question unless we have a complete reappraisal of our character.
