Front Page
WITH HONOR ABOVE ALL
The United States Marine Corps anniversary comes up on November 10th. This event, celebrated by every active duty and veteran Marine important in a huge way to them, is often ignored and unknown to the rest of the American public. However, the day after the Marine Corps’ birthday is November 11th, and this day is called Veteran’s Day every year.
Veteran’s Day is much more inclusionary and expansive in bringing all vets, and those who care about them, onto the front stage to be ‘thanked’ for their service. There are organizations across the country, however, that offer much more than a perfunctory phrase to the men and women who’ve served and quite likely given so much for little reward to their countrymen and women.
One such organization, up in Wausau, is a perfect example of what this article is about. “Thank you for your service” is a statement, but what this organization does is to take action and convert that phrase into a welcoming home that very few veterans actually received upon their return from overseas or other service. The conversion is performed over the course of several days. The honor flights provided by many organizations are what this article is all about.
The honor flight offered by this outfit up on Wausau is the event in particular that impacted the Geneva Shore Report, and personally, by its publisher. The publisher fought and was badly wounded in Vietnam. After getting out of the hospital and being medically shown the door by the military he had no job, walked with a limp, and was, in almost every way, close to becoming a street person. That didn’t happen, but it wasn’t because he was ‘saved’ by any organization of the time. Time passed, however, and the American public changed its feelings about veterans vastly.
Today, operations like The Never Forgotten Honor Flight operation out of Wausau work to give a psychological injection to veterans who’ve never been exposed to this kind of in-depth thanks. Think free hotel rooms for days, fridges filled with free beer, sumptuous meals provided, a guardian assigned to each vet to take care of all needs, night and day, plane trips to Washington D.C. for free, special coats and hats, escorted busses and so much more. This outfit makes vets feel like a million bucks, but when the vets return from their trip to visit the memorials where many of their old friends rest, there is much much more.
Try landing and being received by three thousand or more Wausau residents at the airport all cheering and throwing confetti. How about sliced prime rib in the lobby back at the hotel upon returning. Aboard the chartered aircraft. packages are delivered to each vet. The packages contain personal letters from young children, all elementary school students in Wausau. The students were given the vet’s name and background earlier. They write letters. Those letters, when read aboard the aircraft by these aging men, bring shouts, laughter, and tears. There are other honor flights (in fact, several based out of Milwaukee) but the publisher only flew on this outfit’s plane and lived a special life for three days, basking in a sensory ‘thank you for your service’ pillow of warm comfort and appreciation. The publisher had never been back to the block on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington where all of his lost Marines’ names were carved in stone, one after another (the memorial lists the names by dates and times of death during the conflict). In the company of some of the finest men and women this country produces, that experience was one that could actually really be accomplished, instead of avoided as it had been through the ensuing years.
Veterans Day is coming. These men and women to be honored all know that they were not, and are not, truly different. They are the same as you and I throughout the land, but simply placed into different circumstances. The men, women, and over four thousand contributors to this event, are cut of the same cloth and it was wonderful to be among them. There is a ‘thanks right back at you’, that cannot be avoided, from the veterans to the people who think and pay to provide this wonderful service.
