Let’s face it......war is ugly!
It’s something a lot of people don’t like to talk about, especially the veterans involved. The memories and some of the pain are still present, sometimes very raw.
Cass County is blessed with many veterans who are heroes. And by the way, all veterans are heroes because they served their country.
The following information is from the USS Midway Museum.The final American combat troops left Vietnam in March 1973 a few months after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. America’s involvement in war-torn Southeast Asia, however, would continue for years with thousands of government employees staying behind to assist South Vietnam.
Karl Rebman was in high school in the winter of 1948 when he enlisted in the newly formed National Guard company, and was a charter member of Company F, 123rd Infantry Regiment, 44th Division. For the next four years his life consisted of school life and military life, punctuated with training at various summer encampments. It was following one such summer encampment in 1952 he received orders that his division was being called into active service. He and his fellow Infantry brothers were off to Korea.
Imagine you’re 19. What are you doing with your life? What is your next move? Is it more college, starting your career, or do you even know?
How about being 19, having plans and then you get a letter in the mail that changes everything. In 1971 that is exactly what happened to Kenneth (Ken) Capps. He had plans. He had a life that he was planning to live. Then the draft happened for him. His country needed him. He had to answer the call no matter what else was happening in his life.
It’s been noted that many times when one family member is a veteran, it almost seems like it’s contagious. Because of the pride of serving their country, other family members join to do their part. So it is with Joe McClenning and his son, Ryan. Joe, Beardstown, graduated from BHS with the Class of 1991. He joined the U.S. Army in 1994 and served three years. He felt like he was “spinning his tires” and wasn’t sure where life was taking him.
After 35 years in the military, John Quigley, Beardstown, retired in 2002. He’s proud of his service but there’s a lot that he won’t talk about.
John graduated from Beardstown High School in 1968. He entered the U.S. Army in 1967 and served in the Vietnam War and Operation Desert Storm. He served with the 25th Infantry and the First Calvary. He was in Vietnam for a little over a year.
After graduating from BHS in 1941, Bill “Pawnee” Fischer entered Rankin Trade School in St. Louis to become a machinist. From there he worked in the Curtis-Wright airplane plant in the tool and dye department for about five months before being drafted in the summer of 1943.
He spent five months at the armored training center in Ft. Knox, Ky where the Sherman M4 tank would become his machine of focus. He said, “We marched five to ten miles each morning and trained with tanks all afternoon.”
Courage. Once, it was a quality we expected in our leaders. President Herbert Hoover put it this way:
“The imperative need of this nation at all times is the leadership of uncommon men or women.”
Our Founding Fathers were uncommon men who exemplified courage. Benjamin Franklin summed up that courage shortly after signing the Declaration of Independence:
“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
Those patriots had put everything on the line – property, status, personal freedom and even their lives – by declaring independence from Great Britain.
Here I go again with another pop culture moment. Let me tell you about another one of my favorite movies, “The Empire Strikes Back.” This is second of the three original Star Wars movies. There is one scene in particular in this film that has stuck with me over the years.
A boy, Luke Skywalker, is trying to use the ‘force’ to lift his spaceship out of a thick and murky swamp, where it stuck after he crashed it there.
I remember as I was looking at my book, The Life of Thomas Beard, about telling how the French explorers stopped at different places along the Illinois River including a stop at where Beardstown is now located.
As the buffalo were sighted from their canoes, they wrote how the unusual animals would travel in the thousands and sometimes single file and sometimes as a herd. When they traveled as a herd, they would leave a dark path of soil on which the others could then travel on.