Veterans Day Not Just ‘Day Off’ to Those Who Fought the Wars

Today has special meaning for people like George Heil and Ray Torres and Wayne Haugh.

It’s Veterans Day. And Torres, who is 51 and a Korean War veteran, will help raise flags in Anaheim and remember the terror of facing Chinese soldiers near the 38th Parallel in 1952 when he was only 17 years old.

Heil, who is 62 and a World War II veteran, will be reminiscing about how his ship fortunately missed being berthed at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked.

And Haugh, who’s 59 and also a World War II Navy vet, will be thinking about his welcome home to the United States--and how it contrasted with the indifference, or scorn, given 25 years later to Vietnam veterans.

“My ship was the first to get into New York City after the war ended,” Haugh recalled Sunday, a faraway look in his eyes. “It was quite a celebration.”

The three men were at Veterans of Foreign War Post 3173 in Anaheim Sunday afternoon. They were part of a small group of middle-aged men who were quietly watching the televised football game in the post bar.

When asked about Veterans Day, men like Heil and Torres and Haugh spoke with a kind of sadness--as if discussing a dead buddy. They spoke with no bitterness. It was more the resigned sorrow of men who have seen the years change, for the worse, things that once meant very much to them. Including the celebration of Veterans Day.

“To most people, Veterans Day is just another day off,” said Haugh of Corona. “People no longer know what the day means. We’ve lost touch with our history. The country seems more interested in ancient history than it does with modern history.”

Heil, who lives in Anaheim, recalled that not too many years ago parades were the order of the day on Veterans Day. “Anaheim has a Halloween Parade,” he said. “I think we should have a Veterans Day parade.”

Torres, also of Anaheim, said: “People don’t care now, I guess, or don’t want to care--they want to forget about everything. It used to be a way of life for everybody when there was a draft. You did your two years and got out. But now there’s no more draft.”

Torres, however, did not enter the Army by way of the draft. He volunteered. He was so eager to get into the Korean War that he lied about his age. “I was just 15, turning 16, when I went into the Army, I guess I looked big for my age,” Torres said.

Within a year, Torres was in Korea. The stalemated war was still being fought along an irregular line north and south of a border that ultimately became the truce line. As a teen-ager, Torres, who was an infantry mortar man, faced invading Chinese troops along that battle line.

Heil and Haugh were also teen-agers when they went into the military.

Ship Missed Attack

“I was 17 when I went into the Navy on Dec. 12, 1940,” Heil said. “I was home on leave when the bombing of Pearl Harbor came on Dec. 7, 1941, but my ship had passed through Pearl Harbor just a few months before, on the way home.”

Haugh recalled that he joined the Navy in 1943 “10 days before my 17th birthday.” He was assigned to a troopship that operated in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.

The three men acknowledged that veterans’ groups such as their VFW Post are thin now on servicemen from World War I and Vietnam. There are few World War I veterans surviving, they noted. And few young Vietnam vets choose to join, they said.

“The country made a mistake in how it treated them when they came home,” Haugh said.

“We need their (Vietnam veterans) help,” Heil said. “We all need to stick together to protect veterans’ rights.”

Wars Seem Distant

“Some of them, I guess, think we’re an old-men’s club,” Torres said.

The three men readily agreed that, yes, the years are speeding by, and, yes, World War II and Korea seem distant to today’s younger generation.

But in their mind’s eye, they indicated, it was just a short time ago that they were the teen-agers who volunteered to help their country.

So it’s kind of sad, they said, that Veterans Day today will come and go without much of a celebration.

“Right now, there’s just totally a lack of interest,” Haugh said. “I think it’s a day that ought to be recognized, and not just by the veterans. By everybody.”