My Veterans’ Day Speech
When the bullets stop flying, and the bombs stop falling, and warriors stop dying and the troops come home most people would say that the war is over. However, that isn’t always the case. For some warriors a new chapter of the war has just begun, a war that one wages within themselves – it is a war of memories and ghosts from the battlefield.
Let me tell you about a man that I know, a man from the neighborhood of my youth. His name is Paul Monfette.
As a young man his country called, a Vermont country boy with a young wife and baby. He proudly answered the call.
To make a long story short, Paul who was drafted into the U.S. Army, became a squad leader leading his men across Europe, fighting under the cover of the darkness of night. The fear of death was a constant companion.
Paul was hit twice, once nearly killed, but nothing in his training, or experience on the battlefield, prepared him for what he’d see when he entered – Dachau, a concentration camp located just outside of Munich, Germany.
Many American servicemen passed through these factories of death, but Paul did more than that. For three months he was assigned to a seven man team organized to ensure the camp’s surviving occupants had food and shelter following the liberation of the camp.
“I have seen things that no human should have to see,” Paul told me.
Paul returned home proud of his country, but for him, the war was far from over. For decades he suffered. To close his eyes meant reliving the horrors of the war. His family lovingly supported him through the horrors they, or few other Americans, could truly understand. He never could bring himself to tell his family or anybody else the horrors that he’d seen.
For some reason I was the one that Paul chose to unburden himself of 60 years of pent up memories. It was a milestone moment in his life, one that was the beginning of the end of the war for Paul. He was on his way to finding the peace that had eluded him since the battlefield. Without that weight of the war on his shoulders there is now a spring in his step and a sparkle in his eyes that wasn’t there before.
Not being a veteran myself, thus not being able to truly comprehend war, I asked Paul what kept him alive. He said it was his baby daughter Sheila back home. He placed a photo of her on the side of the butt of his weapon and fashioned a protective covering over it using plexy glass from a downed airplane. That photo and his daughter and his young wife is what kept him alive through some terrible times.
Let me end by reading a poem that Paul’s children say exemplifies their father.
The World has many heroes who have won a world of fame, heroes who have given their all to win in life’s great game. But of all the famous heroes that our changing world has had there’s not a one we look up to or admire more than our Dad. To us, our Dad’s a hero, though he’d turn away from praise. He’s heroic in his quiet strength and his gentle, giving ways. He may not make the headlines. You won’t see him on T.V. but we think our Dad is everything a hero ought to be. He always keeps his promises, on that we can depend. He’s loyal to us, no matter what, and he’ll always be our friend. So when we think of heroes and the great things that they’ve done, we feel the way that we’ve always felt - our Dad’s the greatest one.
In closing, I say, yes, Paul is a hero, but so is his family, a family that has stood by him every step of the way while he made his transition from the battlefield to home, a journey that took more than half a century.
(Paul and his wife, Dot, and children, were at the cermony. Paul and his familywere in tears of joy. He recieved a standing ovation.)