Reflections from History and Faith:Veterans Day

By Jeff Olson

As I sit down to write this, and as the Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations grow ever so closer, I can’t help but reflect upon how much I am thankful for. However, I also must be careful not to focus too soon on those special days until I first take pause this week and remember some of those for whom I am thankful.

Veterans Day is a day I hold in high esteem and at the same level as Memorial Day and second only to Christmas in its personal importance, meaning, and place in the American story and human journey.

From the cessation of hostilities at 11 a.m., Nov. 11, 1918 (the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month), between the Allied Nations and Germany in World War I was birthed what would become the observation of Veterans Day. In Nov. 1919, President Wilson proclaimed Nov. 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day 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…”

In May 1938, an Act (52 Stat. 351; 5 U. S. Code, Sec. 87a) was approved which made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday— a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as Armistice Day, which was primarily a day set aside to honor veterans of World War I.

In 1954, the 83rd Congress, at the urging of the Veterans service organizations, amended the “Act of 1938” by striking out the word “Armistice” and inserting in its place the word “Veterans.” With the approval of this legislation (Public Law 380) on June 1, 1954, Nov. 11 became a day to honor American Veterans of all wars.

Although we honor our veterans every Nov. 11, any day of the year is always a good time to thank a veteran for his or her service. Like you, there are many Veterans I want and need to thank but I sense a most profound and personal obligation to mention those within our family and close friends: one died in battle and some of the others lived on with internal wounds which never completely healed: Millard Base, Wayne Olson, Jack Gauthier, J.D. Spearman, Charles Krulic, Woodrow Wallace and Loyal Lamansky. Though there are so many veterans no longer with us in this life, they certainly are still with us in spirit, in memory and in their enduring legacy.

As USMC Chaplain Dennis Edward O’Brian reminds us: “It is the soldier more than the minister who has preserved our freedom of religion. It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has preserved our freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the orator, who has preserved our freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the community organizer, who has preserved our freedom to protest. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag. It’s been said that if you want to thank a soldier, be the kind of American worth fighting for.”

In reflecting on the commitment, courage and sacrifice of our veterans, I am reminded of the words of John Stuart Mill: “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature that has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”

As we look forward to each new day that freedom unfolds, let’s remember that freedom cannot be preserved by our veterans alone. Vigilance is still the price of liberty, and it will always come down to the age-old battle on the home front of good versus evil. It starts and ends with the individual citizen: the fireman; the police officer; the plumber, the electrician; the teacher; the mechanic; the janitor; the sanitation worker; the businessman/woman, and countless others — living, loving, and working within family and community in concert together on a foundation of core American values. It is here where the strength of America is greatest, and it is here where we can and must be unified as patriots with the will and resolve to know and perpetuate America’s history and heritage of freedom and to hold our leaders to the highest standard of service and accountability that God and our constitution require.

Liberty is not a gift; it is a legacy to be preserved and a decision to be made by each of us every day in choosing personal responsibility over personal autonomy; self-government over self-gratification; freedom over license; initiative and self-reliance over dependency and servitude; national sovereignty over globalism. In the words of Ronald Reagan, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”