Wv Students Do Honor To Veterans, Themselves

Kids today have no respect!

I will never again think or say those words about our Valley youth after attending the Veterans Day observance last week at West Valley High School.

This was a sincere and moving ceremony that recognized and gave thanks to all veterans and particularly to those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country.

This year’s program was dedicated to the 17 young men and women who lost their lives in the recent bombing of the USS Cole in South Yemen.

What struck me most deeply were the attentiveness, the visible respect and the response of the 600 or so students seated in the West Valley gym bleachers.

They listened hard as school staff, veterans, student representatives and members of our nation’s defense forces spoke of their feelings about Veterans Day, our flag, fallen comrades and what it meant to them to be granted their freedoms through the sacrifice of others.

Steve Warren, an English teacher at West Valley and a Vietnam War veteran, spoke of our flag and what it meant to him and to his comrades, some of whom never came home.

Woodworking students constructed a wall of remembrance in honor of the fallen from the USS Cole bombing, and Kayla Anderson of the West Valley ASB leadership spoke in honor of this memorial.

My daughter spoke about my father, who did not serve in the United States forces but fought alongside them as an ally in World War II. He was a British Royal Air Force bomber pilot who flew Lancaster bombers into Germany on night bombing missions while his allies in the U.S. 8th Army Air Force flew B-17 Flying Fortresses into the same areas during daylight hours.

My father was shot down over Denmark on his 17th mission and crash-landed in a farmer’s field. The crash impact killed one of his six crew members, the rear gunner. The surviving crew got out and a few hundred yards from the wreck when it exploded and burned in a fireball.

They were all captured and spent the next three years in a prisoner-of-war camp on the German/Polish border.

In the late winter of 1945, my father and 1,500 allied airmen were forcemarched from Poland to the west, across Germany, as their prison guards desperately wanted to avoid being captured by the advancing Russian army.

About 700 of these airmen managed to walk the 300 miles across Germany, surviving on less than a half loaf of bread and pork fat or a potato given to them daily.

Forty days after leaving Poland, the German prison guards abandoned their prisoners and my father was one of those who walked into Gen. Patton’s advancing 3rd Army. He always remembered his first hot meal of American oatmeal!

When my father started his flight training in Africa, as a 21-year-old volunteer, he weighed 185 pounds. When he reached England two days after being rescued by the U.S. 3rd Army, he weighed just 97 pounds.

He lived a full life and died peacefully just three weeks ago, leaving behind five grandchildren.

Three of his grandchildren - my daughters - are or have been students at West Valley High School.

The losses suffered by both the U.S. and British air forces in World War II were horrendous. Of every 100 men who flew in these bombers, 57 died in action, three died in crashes, three were seriously injured, 13 were captured and held as prisoners of war. Of that 100, only 24 survived the war unharmed.

Most of these men were in their early 20s - not much older than those West Valley High School students participating in last week’s Veterans Day tribute.

This group of students obviously regards this day as very important. Several times they rose to give standing ovations to speakers or video presentations. Veterans and active military personnel were visibly moved, as was I.

Sometimes we forget.

West Valley High School’s staff and students helped me to remember and be thankful for those who fought, and those still serving, to give us what we have today.

They make me proud to be a new American - I became a citizen in 1998 - and to have children who value this country.