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| Mike Jones (at podium) addresses the Veterans Day crowd from the steps of the Community Center. Behind (right) are State Rep. John Frey (left) and First Selectman Rudy Marconi. |
Kids, the fuss is about great pride, tearful sorrow, and the warmest of memories. This is about a great debt we owe, forever to be unpaid.
With this simple ceremony and these humble words, we honor these brave souls who stand here today. Standing before you are the men and women who fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. These are the people who had good friends who never came home from the battlefield. We live safe and sound today because these people were willing to put everything at risk all those years ago.
"The greatest generation" is perhaps an over-used phrase but a worthy one. These are ordinary men and women who did not waver when called to serve. Knowing the risks and regardless of the rewards, to war these citizen-soldiers went. Look around you and wonder at their courage, my friends.
It is incongruous that while war is huge, mighty and faceless, combat is the most personal and intimate of human challenges. In the moments before battle, everyone is scared alone, fights alone, and ultimately lives or dies alone. Every person in uniform here has stories of courage and sacrifice, but I will share with you just two. My father-in-law was at Normandy, and one time - just one evening, when we were alone - he told me a little about that day. He saw a landing craft be sunk with the loss of all hands. He also saw soldiers jumping off other landing craft into water so deep they drowned, dragged down by their equipment. We must always remember the millions of brave men and women who carried our flag in to battle, despite the risk and in spite of their fears.
My mother’s brother, Elden Earl Leach, was another of these citizen-warriors. He’s the uncle I never had. He flew a fighter plane over Okinawa, one of this nation’s bloodiest battles. He flew 13 personal trips into terror. Then, one day, he was lost. Neither he nor his airplane was ever found. It is tragic to lose a son or friend in battle. But it breaks my heart to think of the tens of thousands soldiers, sailors and fliers who were never buried with honor and dignity. I know my mother and her parents, to the very end of their lives, remembered Elden every day. They thought about the life he never got to enjoy, the kids he never had, the Thanksgivings he never shared, the enormous promise of a smart young talented person, lost. There is no way to repay the debt we owe to Elden and all these brave souls. And their number is legion.
That debt does not end with the soldiers who carried a rifle or flew a fighter plane. Those who are not assigned to combat also make sacrifices. Every veteran here knows friends lost in non-combat operations. Of soldiers and fliers who died in training. Of sailors lost guarding convoys crossing the Atlantic. Of the entire squadron of P-38 fighters lost in fog over Greenland, on their way to war, all lost without firing a shot. Their courage was no less, their fear no less, and their sacrifice no less, than those who directly faced the enemies guns.
Nor does this debt end with the wars fought in our lifetimes. We must remember the soldiers of even more distant battles, including those of the First World War, the Spanish-American War, the tragic Civil War, the War of 1812, and the American Revolution. Indeed, we particularly honor the courageous soldiers of the Battle of Ridgefield, which was fought here, right on the soil upon which we now stand.
The Battle of Ridgefield. It almost sounds glamorous. The enemy had raided Danbury and burned precious supplies needed by General Washington’s army. After that success they marched through Ridgebury on their way back to New York. General Wooster’s scouts reported they were approaching our town, so Ridgefielders hurriedly built barricades across Main Street and waited for the enemy. Imagine what it must have been like then, facing the most powerful and well-equipped army in the world. Many of the Ridgefield soldiers were teenagers. Few had any formal military training; all were poorly equipped. A handful of them, perhaps the bravest of all, went into that battle without any ammunition.
Look at Main Street today. Try to imagine what it must have been like, 200 years ago, watching the King’s army marching towards you. Can you imagine the smoke? Can you hear the guns? Can you feel the fear, the pain? Look around you in wonder and amazement.
Vietnam was my war. It was an ugly war; unwanted, unwinnable, unhonored. I served at the end of that war, and over fourteen years almost five million of our friends and neighbors also served there. About 50,000 of them never came home. Imagine 50,000 dead young men and women. That’s roughly the population of two towns the size of Ridgefield. Imagine this sacrifice, and wonder.
Men smarter than I have noted that there is no good war and no bad peace, and in general that is true. But that is not the whole story.
In my heart, and I suspect yours too, that as much as we dislike war we have an even greater hatred of tyranny and injustice. Faced with great evil, it takes a great nation and a great people to put aside the pleasures of peace in order to preserve those values upon which a nation rests. We live in one such nation, perhaps the only one.
Uniquely among the great civilizations of the world, America has never fought a war of conquest and empire. We have never sought war, but all too often it has been thrust upon us. America is the one country willing to rescue those unable to save themselves; to fight for decency and the rights of mankind, to sacrifice ourselves for a fair and honorable justice. That is why we fought Hitler. That is why we fought communism. That’s why we fought Iraq and fight today in far-away Afghanistan. My friends, America is not the policeman of the world, it is the lifeguard.
"The Greatest Generation?" Absolutely true. But that generation had enemies who were clearly identified. Today our enemy hides in dark caves. He steals civilian planes and uses them as weapons. He spares no one, knows no rules, no target is off-limits; no cruelty too unspeakable. On September 11th, this latest war started. Thousand of people who thought it was just another workday died at the hands of this new enemy. As before, we did not seek war; it came to us. As before, as sure as we stand here today, we will finish it.
So America has once again summoned our reluctant citizen-warriors to defend not just our homes, but the values we hold most dear. The values of democracy, of liberty, and of the God-given importance of every individual. They are fighting as we speak, and I pray they all return soon, safely and successfully.
American veterans. For more than two hundred years, they have served when called, regardless of the sacrifice. They will keep the cradle of liberty safe for hundreds of years more. That is the American way, and I am proud to be an American veteran. God bless them, Gob bless the ones no longer with us, and God bless America.
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