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A Personal Veterans Day

By Paul Donahue

Being a conscientious reader of our local daily newspaper I have noticed through the years the appearance in the Memoriam column the name of someone I once knew. It always appears on a patriotic holiday, but I could never keep track, so that if Memorial Day or the Fourth of July passed by and I didn't find his name I'd be puzzled. Then last year I finally figured it out. PFC George Gunn was killed in action in Kontum, Vietnam on Veterans Day, 1967. He was eighteen years old.

George was a couple of years behind me in high school, but I remember him because he was a good friend of my younger brother. It is his mother who places the notices in the Memoriam column, sometimes a poem, other times a letter, and sometimes with a thumbnail picture of him wearing his helmet — it looks too big for his head. It is George's story and his mother's devotion to his memory that now defines the meaning of Veterans Day for me.

The holiday itself was originally named Armistice Day in 1919 to commemorate the end of World War I, which saw 116,516 American military lives lost to combat (940,000 Americans overall). President Wilson said, "To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service and with gratitude for the victory..." It is celebrated on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, when the armistice was signed to mark "the war to end all wars." Then in 1954, after World War II, where 405,399 Americans died, and the Korean War (54,246 deaths), President Eisenhower signed a bill striking the word, Armistice, and inserting the word, Veterans, in it's place. In 1968 the Uniform Holiday Bill moved all federal holidays to a Monday in the hopes of encouraging more travel, recreation, and cultural activities. This lead to much confusion when it was implemented three years later, as many citizens and states refused to accept the change owing to the historic significance of the original date. So, in 1975, at the end of the Vietnam War, where 58,177 American soldiers died, President Ford signed legislation setting observance of Veterans Day again to November 11th, regardless of what day of the week that date falls on. All of this presidential bill signing mattered little to George's mom. The tragedy of George's death ascribed to her, and to exactly fifty other American mothers on that very same day in 1967, by an ironic coincidence, their own personal Veteran's Day.

My brother and George were best friends; they were two of a kind — teenage adventurers. They both grew up in the Mont Pleasant section of Schenectady, NY, an old fashioned ethnic neighborhood. They would contrive to take walks, long walks, perhaps to Mariaville Lake (almost 15 miles directly west) or Thatcher Park (about 20 miles south). Thatcher Park is famous for its overlook, with a view of the entire region, even at the starting point of the hike. I won't describe the short-cut home from the park, but you can guess that since they were walking, yes, over the cliff. My favorite tale is of an evening shoreline bonfire at Great Sacandaga Lake (due north about 30 miles) with some other friends when a voice from the overlooking ledge questioned their intentions, and then, with a degree of benevolence, allowed them to continue their evening. It was none other than Johnny Carson, or so the story goes. Why would George want to enlist in the Army and leave this carefree life behind? My brother asked him. "You don't understand," was George's reply, "It's what I want to do." George qualified for the 173rd Airborne Brigade and volunteered to fight in Vietnam.

For more than forty years George's mom has been posting a Memoriam in the Daily Gazette on the anniversary of George's death, Veterans Day. After all these years the tone of her missives speaks to a boy, because that is how he left her. She still lives in the same house in Mont Pleasant and she keeps in contact with his buddies and his girlfriend. They help her along and help to keep the memory of George within her, a memory that is fresh and near the surface. The years have left little distance between then and now, time has not allowed the memories to diminish. And, if she is feeling a little blue, she has his scrapbook to quickly cheer her up.

I find it difficult to imagine the burden of sorrow that must weigh on her. She, and all the other mothers, fathers, and families who have lost loved ones, are just as much a casualty of war as the soldiers who fall. I think that we should view Veterans Day through the lens that these families do, and celebrate with solemn pride. It was President Eisenhower who designated the date as Veteran's Day, he also famously said, "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, as only one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." I would add sorrow, as only a mother like George's mom can know.

Here is an excerpt from a poem written by Major Michael Davis O'Donnell in Dak To, Vietnam, in January of 1970, three months before his helicopter went missing in Cambodia: "If you are able, save for them a place inside of you and save one backward glance when you are leaving for the places they can no longer go...And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind."

Paul Donahue was a draftee. After discharge and finishing his education, he worked 38 years for GE at their Global Research Center. He is retired now and can afford to reflect, and has determined that two years in the Army and 38 years with GE are equal.