military – Stopped by the Train

Reliving my history

Moammar Gadhafi was killed today. All day long I’ve been reliving the fear he brought to me and my family 25 years ago. And I’m sure that’s small compared to terrors he’s wrought upon people in his own country.

25 years ago, I was a military wife with young children. We lived in Berlin, at that time an occupied territory as it had been since the end of WWII. Berlin was a city where many people came for political asylum, and there were many Libyans in the city, especially on the east side of the Wall.

April 6th is carved in my memory, as the day of the bombing at La Belle discotheque. I’ve never been there, but lots of our soldiers and airmen went there. The bomb was hidden under a table, and when it blew up, U.S. Sergeant Kenneth T. Ford and a Turkish civilian woman were killed instantly. A second American, Sergeant James E. Goins, died from his injuries two months later. 230 people were injured.

37 military members were awarded the purple heart in a ceremony on Memorial Day that year, in accordance with an Executive Order made in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan authorizing the Purple Heart for military members injured as a result of terrorist actions. I was a Cub Scout leader, and we took the pack to the ceremony at Clay Headquarters. It was a sobering event, and one I hope the kids still remember. The online archived Berlin Observer takes me back to that day like it was yesterday. The Observer lists the names of the Purple Heart recipients on page 12.

On April 15th of 1986, I woke to AFN (Armed Forces Network) radio reports that President Reagan had ordered a bombing of Libya in retaliation. What followed was a period of highest security, to protect against potential further Libyan action. Berlin American High School, where I taught, was surrounded by tanks. One of our biggest problems as teachers was keeping the girls from going out and flirting with the 40th Armored tank soldiers.

Each of the school buses that carried the American kids across the city was assigned 2 armored jeeps (front and back). Lining up all those buses and their jeeps (who would NOT leave their bus) was a real challenge.

The elementary school had infantry soldiers guarding all the doors. They inspected every backpack and lunch box that entered – and critiqued the kids’ lunches (to their delight).

It was quite a time. Vehicles were inspected for potential car bombs driving in and out of military installations and housing. And yes, there were a number of bombs. One day I saw one explode in a parking lot. Whenever we found an unattended parcel anywhere, we called the military police, and they dispatched weapons experts. I still experience paralyzing fear when I find backpacks in the library – and yes, I do take precautions. It’s funny how we become the sum total of all our experiences.

Memorial Plaque — Memorial plaque reading, "In this house on the 5th of April, 1986, young people were murdered by a criminal bomb attack"

The war is over

So the President spoke from the Oval Office tonight and told us the war is over. Just like that, troops are coming home because the President says the war is over. I work hard at being apolitical and this post isn’t intended to make a statement on the war. I find the whole history of the Iraqui wars (how many?) very curious and confusing. I guess I’m not the only one, since someone posted a page on Wikipedia titled “Iraq war (disambiguation)“.

Having lived most of my adult life as part of military community, I have personal memories entwined with many of the happenings in the Middle East . . . a family member who lost all her savings in a bank in Kuwait while she was home on break from her teaching job in Kuwait; January 16, 1991 lying on my bed watching bombs fly in Kuwait on TV, assuring a small boy that his daddy was in Alaska (secretly praying that he was still there); meeting streams of returning military with desert sand still clinging to their boots as they first landed on American soil at Bangor International Airport; five years later thankful that the boy’s graduation kept his dad behind his squadron long enough that he missed being in a car-bombed dormitory in Saudi Arabia.

In recent history, there was the First Gulf War (which was only the Gulf War until the 2nd iteration), the Second Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, Operation Iraqui Freedom, and a few other named conflicts. Some of these are different names for the same thing, or overlapped until I didn’t know when one ended and another began.

But now it’s proclaimed — the war is over (or is it a conflict? I can’t ever remember.) Troops are coming home. I so hope he’s right. It’s long overdue. But somehow, I just know that there will be more entries on that Iraq War disambiguation page.

Veterans Day

circa 1946

Today is Veterans Day, a national holiday, first proclaimed as Armistice Day by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919 with the following words: 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, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…

Armistice Day commemorated the end of World War I – known at the time as “The Great War.” The War officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles, France. However, fighting had ceased seven months earlier when an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, between the Allied nations and Germany went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. November 11, 1918, was regarded as the end of “the war to end all wars.”

circa 1985

Armistice Day became a legal holiday through congressional action on May 13, 1938. (52 Stat. 351; 5 U. S. Code, Sec. 87a). Armistice Day was a day dedicated to world peace and to honor veterans of World War I. In 1954 the 83rd Congress amended the Act of 1938 by changing the word “Armistice” to “Veterans” following World War II and the Korean Conflict. With the approval of this legislation (Public Law 380) on June 1, 1954, November 11th became a day to honor American veterans of all wars.

The observance of Veterans Day moved to Monday, along with Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Columbus Day, when the Uniform Holiday Bill (Public Law 90-363 (82 Stat. 250)) was signed on June 28, 1968. This was unpopular with many states, who continued to observe Veterans Day on November 11th, and ignored the legislation. In response to the desires of the the majority of state legislatures, all veterans service organizations, and the American people, Gerald R. Ford signed Public Law 94-97 (89 Stat. 479) on September 20, 1975, which returned the annual observance of Veterans Day to its original date of November 11, beginning in 1978.

Source of information, Department of Veterans Affairs http://www1.va.gov/opa/vetsday/
See also, History.com http://www.history.com/content/veteransday

Memorial Day

A charcoal-grilled hamburger (no gas cooking here), potato salad, a cold beer, rhubarb crisp — ah, now it’s summer. All on our newly built deck. I doubt that nowhere in the world does anyone glory in a sunny warm day more than in Minnesota, and especially after this past winter, the longest the natives remember for a long time. I remember previous years that we hoped for at least one dry cookout-worthy day during the Memorial Day weekend, since this part of May is typically rainy. Not so this year — the lawn is already crunchy dry, and we’re hoping for rain. Not a good omen for the farmers!

According to the History Channel site, Memorial Day was first widely observed on May 30, 1868, to commemorate the sacrifices of Civil War soldiers, by proclamation of General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of former sailors and soldiers. In 1971, Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday to be celebrated the last Monday in May. In my memory, while we celebrate the memory of veterans’ sacrifices, we also decorate family graves on Memorial Day. And so, this weekend we ran between multiple cemeteries, placing decorations and flowers.

There are two constants in almost all small towns around here . . . a library (of course) and some kind of park that memorializes local war heroes. Just across the state border in my hometown, there is a bench remembering my cousin, killed in Vietnam. Also a wall, that looks not so strangely like one in Washington D.C., that honors all local guys and gals who’ve served in the military service.