Editor's note: This is reprinted from a year ago, at reader request.
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1996, it was cold. The wind cut through clothes, right to the bone, like winter's X-ray checking for weak spines.
I was standing outdoors at the Blue Ash Veterans Memorial Park, rubbing my numb nose, listening to flags popping and cracking like far-away gunfire. I had one foot in Korea and the other in Vietnam, studying paving bricks that are divided into our nation's wars, stamped like miniature headstones with the names of those who served.
Stars mean KIA - Killed In Action. Dots mean MIA - Missing In Action. And I was thinking about going AWOL - walking discretely and quickly to my car to turn the heater on charbroil and see if I had any toes left.
But then I looked around at the kids: sixth graders from Edwin H. Greene Elementary, shivering in parkas, sweaters and paper-thin windbreakers.
And then I looked around at the veterans - mainly World War II guys, far side of 70 now, proudly saluting with bare hands, standing at attention in their VFW satin jackets, wearing those hats like open envelopes, toughing it out.
''I remember a few years back when it was a lot worse than this,'' the speaker was saying. ''Ten or 15 below zero and three feet of ice. That was the Battle of the Bulge . . . ''
I decided to stay put.
So I stuck through the speakers who introduced the veterans chapters. Through the politicians who introduced themselves. Through the school children who read poems and placed wreaths at the bronze-booted feet of statues that stand for our wars, from Valley Forge to the Persian Gulf.
I stayed to hear the Post 69 Band put blue lips to freezing brass and play the Star Spangled Banner. And then at precisely 11, honoring the exact time of the armistice to end ''The War to End All Wars'' on Nov. 11, 1918, a white-haired firing squad shouldered 50-year-old Springfields and M-1s and gave an imprecise salute like a string of firecrackers.
And then the taps.
As the solo trumpet marched slowly up the scale, I could tell the bitter wind was making a lot of eyes water. Mine included.
At that moment, small groups gathered all over America to say prayers, salute and pay tribute to those who didn't return or came home inside flag-covered coffins.
And perhaps the saddest part of it all is that those who say thanks owe it the least - veterans who already know first-hand the high price of freedom - and there are fewer each year.
On most Veterans Days, those of us who have not served are too busy taking freedom for granted, working as usual or enjoying another routine banker's holiday. We should stop and listen. These veterans have amazing stories to tell, still fresh from the front-lines of history.
Lou Breitenbach was a flight engineer and top-turret gunner on a B-17 when his plane was shot down over Holland. He was hidden by the Dutch underground, then captured and held in a German prison camp. He still laughs at the ''rumor'' that someone caught and cooked a stray cat in the camp. ''It was better than that horse meat the Germans gave us.''
And he still gets angry at the movie Memphis Belle for dishonoring the men he served with.
If Mr. Breitenbach lived a real-life version of Stalag 17, Louis Kolger's capture by the Japanese was Bridge on the River Kwai. ''There was genocide by the Japanese,'' he says. ''There was a holocaust. We just don't hear about it because the Japanese were smart. They didn't put people in ovens, they worked them to death.''
Mr. Kolger was marched into the jungle to build a bridge. ''It was the rainy season, and we had no shelter. The best we could do was sticks and palmetto leaves to cover our heads.'' Three hundred prisoners went in, less than 100 came out alive.
When he was sent back to Japan, he was loaded aboard a ship with 1,600 prisoners. ''We were sunk twice,'' he recalls. Less than 300 survived.
These former POWs, along with my host, Korean War veteran Harry Falck, were given a special tribute at a luncheon following the park ceremony. They're a small chapter of a shrinking club.
They've stared into the gaunt face of starvation. ''They'll eat anything,'' their wives agreed.
Sometimes they disconnect from reality. ''Living with a former POW is not easy. At least that's what I've been told once or twice,'' Mr. Falck joked. Their wives seconded that one, too.
And sometimes they wonder why they lived when so many died. ''I've thought about that many times,'' Mr. Kolger said, shaking his head. ''Many times.''
They wonder how they survived and about the guys who didn't - while most Americans hurry past the parades and ceremonies and don't wonder about any of it at all.
Now that's cold.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
BRONSON ARCHIVE
