The Last Veteran Of WWI

Last night in commemorating Veterans Day, I erred in writing that there are no more living WWI vets to honor.

I was wrong. There is still one: Frank Buckles, 106, the sole survivor of the 2 million doughboys we sent overseas (including my grandfather, Homer Fassnacht) to stop the Kaiser. Here's his war story, as told today in a wonderful piece by NYT contributing op/ed writer Richard Rubin:

A few years ago, I set out to see if I could find any living American World War I veterans. No one — not the Department of Veterans Affairs, or the Veterans of Foreign Wars, or the American Legion — knew how many there were or where they might be. As far as I could tell, no one much seemed to care, either.

Eventually, I did find some, including Frank Buckles, who was 102 when we first met. Eighty-six years earlier, he’d lied about his age to enlist. The Army sent him to England but, itching to be near the action, he managed to get himself sent on to France, though never to the trenches.

After the armistice, he was assigned to guard German prisoners waiting to be repatriated. Seeing that he was still just a boy, the prisoners adopted him, taught him their language, gave him food from their Red Cross packages, bits of their uniforms to take home as souvenirs.

Of being the last, Buckles speaks for all the vets of what was supposed to be the last war:

“For a long time I’ve felt that there should be more recognition of the surviving veterans of World War I,” he tells me; now that group is, more or less, him. How does he feel about that? “Someone has to do it,” he says blithely, but adds: “It kind of startles you.”

Do read the story and pause for a moment to think what it means when the living history of something dies, and the textbook history is all that is left. As Rubin says, the history doesn't change, but it becomes different, "just beyond our grasp somehow."

hat-tip: Real Clear Politics

Google: Current Vets Need Not Apply

Maybe I should give Google a break. After all, they actually acknowledged Veteran's Day on Veteran's Day with a nice commemorative flourish on the ol' logo.

But wait ... it's a long way from Tipperary to Iwo Jima to Da Nang to Baghdad.

Check out the WWI vintage helmets. Google apparently thinks it's OK to honor WWI vets -- none of whom are around to honor any more -- but the honor is not extended to vets from CQM's (conflicts of questionable morality), including even WWII, who wore a helmet like the one in the thumbnail.

How nice it would have been for Google to honor our WWII vets, who are dying at a rate of over 1,000 a day, by making the middle helmet one of their vintage.

And how absolutely superb it would have been to make the helmet over the "e" a current version in desert camo to honor the vets of the current war. But that would take courage -- something vets have but techies from Mountain View are sadly lacking.

To our vets, including my dad, who served on subs in the Pacific in WWII, God bless you for standing up for America. We love you all.

Short Victory For Snot-Nosed Secularist

In a bit o' power to the people, I wrote Cong. Ron Packard, a good GOP man who represents Riverside, when I heard that a complaint from a single, solitary slime-ball secularist had brought an end to the solemn "13-Fold Recital" flag ceremony at funerals at Riverside National Cemetery and other Veterans Administration cemeteries across the country. (Here's my post on the matter.)

Yesterday I got a response, and I just have to say ... YIPPEE!

Thank you for contacting my office regarding the Department of Veterans Affairs policy on the 13-fold recital ceremony. I appreciate the opportunity to update you on this situation: good sense and common cultural values have prevailed.

On October 25, 2007, an article in the Press Enterprise brought to my attention that a memo from the National Cemetery Administration (NCA) banned the recitation of a common flag-folding ceremony sometimes used by cemetery employees and volunteers at 125 national cemeteries. The change in policy was prompted by one complaint which originated at Riverside National Cemetery.

Freedom of speech and religion are American freedoms that I strongly support, and I believe that the rights granted to all citizens through the First Amendment are instrumental to democracy. Therefore, on October 29, 2007, I sent a letter to the Acting Secretary of Veterans' Affairs, along with 127 of my colleagues expressing our frustration with the policy of disallowing employees and volunteers from providing the 13-fold recital to families if they request the ceremony.

In addition, I introduced H.Res. 783, along with Rep. Steven LaTourette, which expresses the sense of the House of Representatives that the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration employees, volunteers, and veterans' service organizations that perform funeral honors and memorial honor details should be permitted to recite the 13 steps to fold an American flag (known as the "13-fold recital") at any national cemetery if requested by the family of the deceased.

You may be happy to know that the Department of Veterans Affairs instituted a different policy on November 1, 2007, which stated that NCA employees, including VA-sponsored Volunteer Honor Guards, can read the "13-fold recital" if requested by the deceased's survivors. In addition, they will not be selective in determining which recitations on the meaning of the thirteen folds will be read.

However, the VA will not accept for reading any texts that would have an adverse impact on the dignity and solemnity of a cemetery honoring those who served the Nation. Among the texts that would not be read would be those that are obscene, racist, are "fighting words," or are coarse, abusive, or politically partisan.

While our system of government can sometimes be slow and unwieldy, in this case strong reaction by the people and quick action by interested Representatives yielded a speedy "about face" by the Department of Veterans' Affairs.

So today, somewhere in America, volunteer vets are once again folding the flag that had draped the coffin of a vet who has passed on, reciting the pledge, honoring his service, respecting his family ... and letting secularists know that we Americans will stand strong in support of our freedoms.

p.s.: Flopping Aces has the text of the 13-fold recital here.

p.p.s.: Please see the site from which the photo came; it honors a fallen hero you should remember, Johnny Michael Spann.

Snot-Nosed Secularist Defeats Vets

Vets like these two gentlemen, Bobby Castillo and Rees Lloyd, have conducted a flag-folding ceremony for the funerals of vets at the Riverside National Cemetery, as have others throughout the country.

And they're spittin' mad:

Through thousands of military burials, Memorial Honor Detail volunteers at Riverside National Cemetery have folded the American flag 13 times and recited the significance of every fold to survivors of those being laid to rest.

The first fold, a narrator tells relatives, represents life, the second a belief in eternal life.

The 11th fold celebrates Jewish war veterans and "glorifies the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob."

A single complaint lodged against the words for the 11th fold recently prompted the National Cemetery Administration to ban the entire recital at all 125 national cemeteries.

It turns out that complaint came from just one person, a selfish, bitter, vicious subhuman who heard the dreadful word "God" at that very cemetery. Rees Lloyd actually spun together some better adjectives than I did:

"That the actions of one disgruntled, whining, narcissistic and intolerant individual is preventing veterans from getting the honors they deserve is truly an outrage. This is another attempt by secularist fanatics to cleanse any reference to God."

The bureaucrats at that most august and valiant agency, the National Cemetery Administration, followed standard bureaucratic protocol and simply folded in the face of one sludge-synapsed, self-aggrandizing sorry soul -- the bizarre flipside of their characteristic bureaucratic inability to list a finger to simplify their byzantine processes for good people in need.

Mike Nacincik, paper clip chain maker for the Cemeterians, thinks we're a stupid bunch that aren't much worth his taxpayer-funded time:

"We are looking at consistency. We think that's important."

Yeah, but are we? Do we think it's important to have a consistently soulless ceremony or a memorable and appropriately solemn one? Whatever -- just don't read anything into their action to imply that these secularist wimps public servants showed any bias against religion by their action.

"People are going to have their own views on that."

You mean, Nacinicik, that there's no Federal Manual for Raging Impotently at the Bureaucracy we can pull out, flip to subsection 7(A) 4.7c and read the proper procedures for flippin' our stacks over the power placed in the hands of little people looking for ways to impose their twisted, minority will on everyone?

The bureaucrats are by far the worse secular intolerants in this story, not the unnamed -- Oh, how I wish they had named the faceless coward! -- whiner who initiated the action.

Ken Calvert is a fine conservative Republican Congressman who represents Riverside. I'm going to drop him an email to ask for an investigation and regulatory fix to this situation. Won't you, too?

Hat-tip: Jim