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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 12, 1999
Contact: Frank Lennon
(401) 831-8696

SARATOGA MUSEUM FOUNDATION PRESIDENT LEADS VETERANS DAY PARADE IN NORTH KINGSTOWN, RI

• Remarks given by Frank Lennon at the concluding ceremonies, 11 November 1999

Frank Lennon (R) marches in the Veterans Day Parade with Robert Knowles, Commander of American Legion Post 12, North Kingstown, RI. Click on image to see at full size.

The Eleventh Hour, of the Eleventh Day, of the Eleventh Month. In 1918, this was the time and day that World War I hostilities ended. As such, November 11th became known as Armistice Day. In 1954, Congress changed the name to Veteran's Day, realizing that peace was equally preserved by veterans of WW II and Korea.

It is recognized not only by the US, but also by Canada, France and the UK (known as "Remembrance Day" in Canada and Great Britain).

While stationed in Berlin shortly after the wall went up in the early 1960s, I had the honor and privilege of serving as an exchange officer to the British Army. I was assigned to the Royal Anglian Regiment, and on Remembrance Day the Colonel told me a story that has stuck with me forever. As a very young man during WWII, he had served in Gibraltar. There's an old guardhouse near the Rock, probably constructed during the Napoleonic Wars. During some interminable watch many wars ago, a British soldier had etched the following words in one of the stone walls:

In times of trouble and of war
God and the Soldier all adore
But when war is over and trouble's righted
God is forgotten, and the old soldier slighted.

If you'll bear with me for a few minutes, I'd like to elaborate on that theme here today.

Last November 11, I made my first visit to the Veterans Cemetery in Exeter with my fellow members of the Special Forces Association to honor the late Sergeant Henry Collette of Central Falls, who jumped with the OSS behind German lines shortly after the Normandy invasion. Within the ever-dwindling circle of OSS heroes Sergeant Collette's exploits are legendary; yet few Rhode Islanders knew of the extraordinary nature of his accomplishments until Dave McCarthy wrote about them in his veterans column in PROJO. Among other things, Collette and his lieutenant, Roy Rickerson--just the two of them-- convinced a German unit to surrender. The unit numbered 3,824 of the enemy!

Last Armistice Day, Rickerson was with us when we presented a green beret to the family of Sergeant Collette.

I returned home to find a message waiting from Frank Foley of North Kingstown, who said "I just read the great op-ed piece in the Providence Journal about your efforts to save Saratoga as a museum, and wanted to help. I served for seven years aboard Sara."

I returned his call and asked when he was aboard. "From 1934 to 1938," he said, "and from 1943 to 1945." Foley was aboard when carrier aviation came of age, and he survived a furious kamikaze attack off Iwo Jima. His story also deserves to be preserved for future generations.

A year ago September I attended my first reunion of the USS Saratoga Association in Saratoga Springs, NY. Of 500 people there, 125 were from the WWII Saratoga. We announced our plans to try to save the current Saratoga as a museum, and asked the Association for financial support. The response was overwhelming.

One elderly gentleman made his way to the front of the room and said, "My name is John Finn. I'm now 90 years old, and I have limited resources. But Saratoga was my first ship, and I want her to become a platform from which we can teach the young people of today and of future generations about those who have gone before, and of their sacrifices to keep us all free. I'm donating $500 to get the fundraising off the ground."

Ladies and gentlemen, I didn't know it at the time, but John Finn won the Congressional Medal of Honor at Pearl Harbor, and he is the nation's oldest living MOH recipient. He came up to me and said, "I'd like to be there when you open this museum, and I don't have a lot of time. Do what you can."

Following John Finn's lead, the USS Saratoga Association committed to a fund raising goal of $2 million in seed capital, to demonstrate credibility to both the state and the Navy.

It is in the names of the John Finns and the Frank Foleys and the Henry Collettes that we are pursuing the development of the Air, Land & Sea Heritage Park. This Park will be a living memorial to Rhode Islanders of all services who fought in all wars to protect our way of life.

Veterans were the first constituency to whom we reached out in building the grass roots support for the Saratoga project. I recall an early conversation with Irv Levin, a former legislator from Cranston who now serves as the head of the United Veterans Council of Rhode Island. During his many years in the legislature, Levin told me, he was dismayed at the dwindling number of his colleagues who had ever served in the military. This made it much more difficult for him to generate interest in veterans issues, for whom he was a powerful voice until his retirement.

Some social scientists might argue that a societal ignorance of military experience is a good and precious thing. I disagree, and a close study of history will show that is a potentially dangerous ignorance.

During the discussions this past year about whether or not to send ground troops into the Balkans, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Moten wrote an op-ed piece that was published in many of the nation's newspapers.

"I AM a ground troop", he wrote.

I'm the guy you've heard pundits, politicians, pollsters, and very occasionally, real people talking about. You will usually hear them talking about "sending in" guys like me. But what we "ground troops" are to be "sent in" to do is the subject of much muffled mumbling.

This mumbling, ladies and gentlemen, stems from the lack of connection of the average American with anything military. This country has now reared a second generation that cannot tell a colonel from a corporal, a soldier from a Marine, or a howitzer from a tank.

More importantly, many of those we elect today to make our tough political decisions--especially financial decisions--also have little understanding of, and little vested interest in, military or veterans issues. This is becoming more true every day in Washington--witness the loss of former Marine and US Senator John Chafee--but it is even more true at the state and local level, where elected officials tend to be younger.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is an accident of history that we can enjoy such economic prosperity, and yet worry so little about the security of our country. Our contented citizens give almost no thought to war, or conflict, or much else that happens beyond the boundaries of their immediate communities--never mind on distant shores.

When a crisis rears, however, and a threat intrudes on this sheltered, suburban way of life, our citizens pay those anonymous "ground troops" an unwitting compliment. "They believe that we are equal to any task," continued Colonel Moten. "Over a coffee break, with a strategic wave of the hand, they 'send in the ground troops,' and assume that all will be well."

That attitude brings back the words on that guardhouse wall in Gibraltar:

In times of trouble and of war
God and the soldier all adore...

"Civilians, feeling no connection to our military, have a detached view of our foreign policy. How long has it been since national security concerns have played any significant role in an election? Our leaders perceive no political benefit to engaging the public on issues in which there is such widespread disinterest. The American public tends to focus on foreign problems only so long as Christiane Amanpour does, and then with far less fervor."

President George Washington stated in his 1793 message to the Congress: "... if we desire to avoid insult we must be ready to repel it; if we desire to secure peace ... it must be known that we are at all times ready for war."

Those who advocate the unpopular course of being ready for war always find themselves in competition with many other ways to spend taxpayer money, primarily social services programs. I suggest to you today that we must continually remind those who control the purse strings of a very basic truth:

The greatest social service a nation can provide its people is to keep them alive and keep them free.

Retired Former Chief of Staff of the Army and Supreme Allied Commander Europe General Bernard W. Rogers was awarded the George C. Marshall Medal a few weeks ago (Oct 99). In his speech that day he made a very interesting point about the unique nature of military service in our society.

"A doctor contributes to his patients; a priest to the members of his parish; a lawyer contributes to his clients; a politician to his constituents. But those privileged to wear our nation's uniforms belong to a profession in which every member, every day, makes a contribution -- no matter how small -- to every citizen of this great land."

Colonel Moten concluded his piece with an interesting challenge:

"Find a 'ground troop' and ask what he-or she-is willing to die for. You will be moved, even enlightened. And our collective thinking about our national interests will be the richer for your conversation."

I'd like to close with a short piece by an anonymous writer. Many of you have undoubtedly heard these words before, but they deserve to be heard again, especially on this day.

It is the soldier, not the reporter,
Who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the soldier, not the poet,
Who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier, not the campus organizer,
Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.

It is the soldier,
Who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who has won the protestor's freedom to burn the flag.

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Last Updated:
9/29/01