Originally published in The Vidette-Messenger of Porter County on November 5, 1975.
Tells Story About Sacrifice Of World War I Vet
Ralph Schenck’s Valparaiso Observer
Today we should like to reveal an Armistice Day story that is probably typical of so many of you home folks who were directly or indirectly a part of any of the wars of this century.
You may be a father, mother, wife, relative or friend and you, too, may have unforgotten memories still vividly recalled. Mere words for such thoughts often seem inadequate. This is a reluctant attempt to try to tell your story as our experience.
This is about a personal friend who, along with four million other young men wore the uniform of a soldier during World War I. I visited a veterans’ hospital to see this life-long companion whose outlook for the future had to be changed because of his war sacrifice.
Here was one of nature’s noblemen who saw the need for his service to our country and he shared of himself for those of us now living. Here was a loyalty and endurance beyond the call of that which he had ever anticipated. He had mingled with many. He loved to hear the evening taps in the training camp, but whoever welcomed the bugler’s reveille.
On that day of my visit, from his arched eyebrows, his eyes looked like two burnt holes in a blanket. His former plans for a future had been altered. He never liked loafing anywhere. He wanted to belong and to achieve. Man needs to belong at work and at play in health and distress to attain the fullness of life’s potential. He had now achieved and he did belong, yet he was segregated with those that had returned only partially equipped with an impaired potential.
That day he fumbled somewhat with what was left of an only arm. I had a morbid sense of lacerated flesh when this might have happened. He didn’t accent his answers as we tried to revive some of our youthful memories. There was a firm dignity and an independence of self-control of moral earnestness in his discourse. By no means, however, was he ready to dig his own grave, yet the beacon for a new horizon was far different than it had been heretofore. His passport to a new life was now in jeopardy, but he was courageously yielding, without apparent bitterness, to the uncertainties of his future destinies.
It was pleasant to be together again, but so different from what we may have ever forecasted. Our long bond of friendship had never been weak, but man’s inhumanity to man had so massacred his flesh that it had added an experience beyond belief. He was once tall and strikingly handsome and he had an easy confidence that was born in him. The growth left for his future was only growing old with an awesome reminder of what might have been.
There was to be no laughter and joy from a family that he might have had in a normal life. Long days and nights of loneliness were to come. He might have been aware of the statistical probabilities of what came from frontline action in a war, but he figured that he was never destined for such a fate. Such a culture of devastation and destruction could not deter his determination of life, yet now he was to be a part of the brutality that filters out of war’s outrages.
He was not at the hospital very long after our visit. There was a greater need for his service elsewhere than in mortal life. He had given his last full measure of devotion to his country that had provided him with an heritage of Liberty in the pursuit of happiness. He was soon to rejoice to share of himself in that invisible zone of a faith in immortality. Here he would be born again. There would be no wheelchairs there in this mystic home of the blessed. He was a muted testimony of war’s harvests. Yesterday was a dream. Tomorrow was a reality.
The capsules of past memories for such a friend are now but parchments of meditation for anyone of such experience. The ideas for eliminating the evils of war are still a negative philosophy. The recycling of history forbids us to shun the possibilities of such rhythmic occurrences of wars. It takes courage “to turn the other cheek” but it also takes courage to face with faith.
There was a serenity about this friend that seemingly did not quail in the presence of the tempest of approaching death.
As I left him for the last time, I recalled how I had stumbled in my communication with him. I had tried to avoid the silky platitudes and stereotyped assertions of tribute that may be the fashion for such circumstances. Everyone has his own interpretations for these amazing enigmas of life. We woo the continuation of our mortal life, but this friend encountered a confusing courtship. His “kingdom was not of this world.”
Just what is the precise purpose of an Armistice Day for the living? Are our ceremonies so effective as to affect the new generation? There are still many fathers, mothers and others of those who because of wars now rest in peace, yet these living friends and relatives have quiet memories.
It is also true that there are some who may never have experienced such losses, yet Armistice Day is still a reminder of what might have been or what could be. The nation that has a tendency to ignore its past for such sacrifices is in danger of disintegrating. The diminishing numbers over our nation that assemble for this once-a-year ceremony are not to glorify war but, perhaps, to remind the living of a possible future. “The gift without the giver is bare.” Those that gave their lives in the wars of this century are no longer present. To those with direct losses this is not just another holiday. Each individual is entitled to his own answer. Each may search his own mind. What once was is no more.
My friend’s mother sobbed when he left for the war. His picture rests on her mantle at home. She had her own thoughts about her son after he had gone to eternal rest from war. She suffered in defeat as her son had suffered in victory for his country.
We can only juggle with words creating abstractions without answers. Great national powers have, historically, always tried to rule the world. That traditional gap between the rules and the ruled has yet to be bridged.
Major powers that have today become the superior nations continue to be the supreme influence in the affairs of the future of humanity. It should not be the number of people to be ruled but the service granted by the rulers to the people of the world.
As wars continue to be prevalent in life it is because the rulers have not discovered the solutions, yet it is the people that have to endure the sacrifices.
We should not become so immersed in the present that we may ignore the lessons of the past that exemplify the causes of wars.
