Editorial

Veterans too often honored too late

Saturday, November 13, 2021

He was a stooped, gray old man. His shoulders were bent and his knees, somehow, could not quite be straightened out. The eyes that looked out above the fringes of the white beard that covered most of his face had a far-away look in them, as if they saw forgotten things that other men missed.

He wore the brass-buttoned coat of a Civil War veteran, and in his lapel there was the ribboned rosette of a holder of the Congressional Medal of Honor; and as he passed down the aisle of the crowded streetcar, everyone he passed paid him the tribute of a second, longer, more respectful stare.

He paid his fare, went painfully down the steps and disappeared in the crowd on the sidewalk, followed by the gaze of half of the occupants of the car. And for a moment, on the faces of those who looked after him, there was a strange expression, such as men and women wear when they have momentarily come in contact with a man who is set apart and somehow higher than themselves...

It is interesting to contrast these old soldiers with what they used to be. Now they are beat, old, infirm, waiting for their long lives to draw to a close. But once — nearly three-quarters of a century ago — they were young, spirited, eagerly looking forward to whatever life might bring them.

They came from the farthest end of the sprawling new land that was America in 1861; and, mostly, they had no notion of the high destiny that awaited them. The flags and the bands drew them into the armies, north and south, from humdrum jobs and unexciting lives — from farm and mine and shop and office; and they marched away to make history and take part in tremendous events.

Then, after the war, they went back to the jobs; and their fellows, very likely, could not see anything particularly noteworthy about them. The army had made some of them callous and some of them silent. It had taught somehow to drink and somehow to pray. Some it had ruined and some it had straightened up.

But one and all, they went back to their old jobs, or found new ones; and there was little glory in it for them. It is only now that they get their glory. Now, contrasting their lives with the ordinary, uneventful, undedicated lives of the great average, we can see that they are men set apart and, when we see them on the street, we feel like tipping our hats to them.

We have, in this country today, some 2,000,000 youngish men who can remember service in France. We don’t pay very much attention to them. We rub elbows with them constantly; they’re scattered into all kinds of jobs, and the mark of their service is not yet upon them.

But forty years from now it will be a different story. Then it will be the World War veterans who are old and bent and tired. They, like the Civil War men today, will be legendary figures to their generation. By that time they will have forgotten the pain and misery of the war. Only its epic quality will be left. Then — like the Civil War veterans, half a century late — they will get their glory.

_

While these paragraphs were written 92 years ago by The Poplar Bluff Printing Company, a forefather of our current Daily American Republic, many of its words still ring true today. Replace Civil War with World War II, and there are about 240,000 service members still alive who lived through those battlefields. The average age of the Vietnam War veteran is 69, according to the VA.

What has changed, we hope, is that we now realize that the pain and misery of war are not so easily forgotten. With that realization should come an all more acute need to honor those who have served.

Thank you Poplar Bluff, Neelyville, and Twin Rivers students who took time this past week to honor our veterans, to those who organized the ceremony at the Black River Coliseum, and to everyone else who stepped up on Veterans Day.

But thank you most of all to our servicemen and women for the sacrifices only those in your own ranks can truly understand.

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