Pastoral Prayer & Meditation: On Veterans’ Day by wren bellevance-grace

Reading: In Flanders Fields by John McCrae

Reflections : Keeping Faith

Melody Lee:

On November 11, 1918, at the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month the guns on the Western Front in Europe fell silent beginning the armistice that ended the first World War. This Tuesday, November 11th, we will celebrate Veterans Day in the United States. It is the only federal holiday observed on its traditional date rather than on a Monday because of the symbolism of the date itself. On this day in 1918, peace came at the last possible moment to save the world which had been upended by years of bloody conflict. Because the war had been such a cataclysmic event in which so many lives had been lost, people wanted to believe that surely it would be the war to end all wars. If only that had been true, unfortunately the Treaty of Versailles that formalized the peace sowed the seeds of discord to come.

Until 1954, the November 11th holiday was known as Armistice Day in the United States as it still is today in the United Kingdom and Canada. By that time because the United States military had fought in both World War II and in the Korean War, it seemed appropriate to rename the holiday to honor all American Veterans whether they had served in time of war or peace. This Tuesday the national Veterans’ Day ceremony will commence at 11:00 AM at the Arlington National Cemetery in Washington D.C. with laying a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknowns.

On Veterans Day we thank everyone who has served this country. When I looked at the US Department of Veterans Affairs website, I learned that there are more categories of Veterans than I had realized. Everyone who has served the United States as an active member of the Armed Forces, the Public Health Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is a veteran and honored today for their service to the public welfare and to the defense of this nation. There are approximately 18 million veterans living among us.

Poppies have become a symbol of remembrance on Veterans Day, for that flower bloomed profusely in the recently disturbed soil of Belgium, or Flanders as it called in the poem, where the battle lines of the Western Front had been drawn and where many of those who had lost their lives in the fight had been buried. To get into the National World War I museum in Kansas City, Missouri, you walk over a bridge with poppies encased in glass below. One of the most famous poems from WWI is John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields.” The speaker in the poem is one of the fallen who calls out to the living to carry on the fight and not break faith with the dead.

What does it mean to us to keep faith? Every individual who is willing to fight to protect their country, and their loved ones, is courageous and makes a heroic sacrifice. American veterans are people who have been generous and brave in their service to their community and country. They keep the faith and remind us that we can too.

They remind us that it falls on each of us living today on the precipice of an uncertain future to give our best as we fight for a better world working together to create the best life possible for our family, neighborhood, state, country, and the world. We thank our Veterans not only for their service but also for the way their actions inspire in us.

We are honored to have two Veterans, Helen Jacoby and Ty Hapworth, from our congregation helping with the service today. You will hear more from them in a moment. Helen has brought American flag pins with her today as a gift for you. They are on the table in the front of the Meeting House. You are invited to take one after the service if you wish. The American flag serves, at its best, as a symbol not of one political party, but of the whole country and its highest ideals.

Helen Jacoby:

I was in the Marine Corps during the 70’s. I actually thrived in the military. Does that mean I like war or killing people – no.

I went to boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina. The training was similar to what Joyce described except that when 8 weeks rolled around the drill instructors would scream “Don’t you wish you were in the Army, Don’t you wish you had joined the Navy!! You’d be done with boot camp now!” Ours went for 12 weeks. I might have had a leg up on some of the other recruits as I was familiar with what happens at boot camp. I use to try and tell others that were having a hard time… remember is only lasts 12 weeks then it’s over.

I had a number of different military jobs, Remington Raider, work in intelligence, Drill Instructor and Service Record Keeper. I like David did Amphibious Warfare Training at Camp Lejeune.

There are a number of experiences etched in my mind. Once we were in training and enjoying some downtime watching tv when on the news there was a small snippet saying a helicopter was shot down in the demilitarized zone. Within five minute we got a call to pack up our gear and be ready for the transport choppers. “If you got family call them and tell’em you won’t be home for a while”. I along with so many others waited in line at the bank of phones. I called a friend and remember saying “We’re going, I don’t know if I’ll see you again or when.” …..

I remember when I was a drill instructor looking at each recruit and hoping what they learned would keep them alive.

I could tell you how a guy next to me didn’t follow directions and got blown up and about the years after that event when, every once in a-while , a tiny piece of metal would find its way to the surface of my leg ready to come out. You watched each other’s back and follow orders, that’s what keeps you alive in the military.

I couldn’t stand fireworks for the longest time. I was thrilled when the Boston Pops decided to put music to their 4th of July display. An ex-POW friend of mine still goes down to his basement for days around the 4th to get away from the fireworks. Too many sights and sounds from other times.

I could talk about “coming home” and being looked at as scum or about how long it takes to really “come home” and adjust back into civilian society. Some take longer than others and some can’t adjust. Some of us bury that time deep inside and try to lock the door. Others try to adjust to civilian life in other ways. It isn’t easy. So many variables, not everyone follows directions. In the military we like trust and consistency. It’s what kept us alive. What is used to measure worth is also vastly different. It’s like civilians and military speak two different languages. Barbara a friend of mine ran a diner where I would go. She was in Naval Intelligence. I use to call her squid and she’d called me leatherneck. That was ok because we had a bond. She would say something to someone in the diner (she was always known for speaking her mind) and then would look at me or call me later on the phone saying “you know what I mean” and I would know what she meant. We spoke the same language.

Barbara was one of the kindest, most loving heartfelt people I have ever known so that goes to show that just because you are military doesn’t make you bad. I think people still think negatively about the military. Barbara always looked out for the underdog, those less advantaged. You create strong bonds with your comrades and that’s what supports you. Those bonds last well after.

There are two incidents that will forever be etched in my mind in a positive way. One, a few years ago I received a card in the mail for Veteran’s Day. It didn’t say much but spoke volumes as it was a thank you for my service. I still have that card. The other is that when Barbara died Chris took the time to make sure a flag was present without having to be asked. I thank those individuals from this congregation for their understanding.

It has taken me years but now I join in on candlelight vigils to stop the war but wish that we could find a way to not have started it in the first place.

I hope that you can take away from here a bit of an understanding of who we are and that peace begins at home with the use of diplomacy. If there was an understanding of the inherit worth and dignity of everyone, if people’s lives meant more than money and we could learn to share, speak and negotiate would we need the military? Maybe we can all work on that. In the mean-time don’t turn away from those who serve or have served. Acknowledge them and strive to work even harder for peace so they won’t have to go to war. Most soldiers really do want peace not war.

Ty Hapworth:

I apologized to a drill sergeant’s hat once.

The reality is exactly as weird and funny as it sounds. I literally got down on the ground and did push-ups while apologizing to an actual hat.

It was my first day of basic training. I had joined after 9/11, while I was in college, so I arrived as a twenty-two-year-old college graduate, too old to be as scared as the other privates, but still too young to know that I probably should be. I was tall, soft around the middle, and full of unearned confidence.

I was walking past a drill sergeant when I accidentally brushed against the hat he was holding. We both did that normal adult male thing, a polite nod, a quick “excuse me.” Then I watched his face change as he remembered: oh right, I’m a drill sergeant. And you’re nobody.

“HOLY bleep, private! You just assaulted my cover! Apologize to it!”

I stared at him for a second. “I’m sorry… hat?”

“GET DOWN AND BEAT YOUR FACE!” he screamed. (And for context, “beat your face” is drill sergeant speak for “do push-ups,” usually for offenses both real and imagined.)

So I dropped. “I’m sorry, hat.” Push-up. “I’m sorry, hat.” Push-up. Somewhere around twenty, I realized the Army was going to be very different from college.

The thing about basic training is that it’s designed to break you down to nothing and then build you back up into something else. Something useful. And it works, mostly through humiliation and exhaustion.

You learn that the maximum effective range of an excuse is zero meters.

You learn that a hat is a “cover,” running shoes are “go-fasters,” and the thick government-issue glasses are called BCGs, officially “Basic Combat Glasses,” but known to everyone as “Birth Control Goggles,” because your love life is over the moment you put them on.

And somewhere between all of that, you learn that you’re capable of far more than you thought you were. Then you learn that it doesn’t really matter, because the point was never about you. It’s about what happens when people who thought they couldn’t, do it anyway — together.

That’s the part that matters, and the part they don’t put in the recruiting commercials.

I met Chris Rutherford on my first day of Officer Candidate School in Fort Benning, Georgia. We were both early, and we ended up spending the day cleaning the barracks together. Nobody tells you this about the Army, but it’s mostly cleaning, cleaning weapons, cleaning floors, cleaning things the drill sergeants had just messed up, and cleaning things that were already clean, just so you can clean them again.

Chris was an award-winning sportswriter from Ohio. He was twenty-three, funny, smart, and had an easy way about him that made you feel like you’d known him forever.

We talked about nothing and everything while we mopped, sports, hometowns, why we’d both put our lives on hold to do this. The answer, for both of us, was probably some version of duty, or at least what a twenty-something thinks duty is supposed to be.

Two years later, Chris was killed in Iraq. He was twenty-five.

He was supposed to spend his life writing about baseball and football. He should have been a dad by now. He should be here, in a place like this, telling better versions of these same stories But he’s not.

And nobody ever asked if it was fair. Because it isn’t. It never will be.

Some of us get to come home, tell funny stories, and grow old. Some of us don’t. There’s no logic to it. No order. Just chance, who lives, who doesn’t, who keeps carrying the weight of remembering. The cruelty of it sits with you if you let it

So why do we still do it? Why keep serving, keep volunteering, keep handing over years of our lives, sometimes all of them, for something we can’t always explain?

Because meaning doesn’t come from safety or comfort. It rarely comes from justice either. It comes from giving yourself to something bigger, knowing it may take more than it gives back.

That’s what service really is. A leap of faith.

To everyone who has made that choice, and to those who still do, thank you.