Radio Salute to Veterans Runs Gamut From WWI to Operation Desert Shield

Winston Roche’s old, blue eyes get misty when he thinks about the glory days, such as they were.

He was 17, fresh out of Los Angeles High School and, as he put it, “I really wanted to fight the Kaiser.”

Now 92, Roche would spend 22 months “over there,” through the battles of Chateau Thierry, Aisne-Marne and St. Mihiel; surviving mustard gas, machine-gun fire and misery in its more mundane forms.

He and other soldiers would dine on French rolls plucked from the mud, washing them down with cold coffee from their canteens. In the Argonne, they went 42 days without bathing. Sometimes they would rub coffee into their stubble before attacking it with safety razors.

Roche likes Veterans Day. It gives the North Hollywood resident a chance to put on his tattered World War I victory medal--”my favorite”--as well as his French Croix de Guerre and his Purple Heart.

With another generation of Americans facing the prospect of war--including his grandson Robert, a Navy petty officer second class aboard the aircraft carrier Saratoga--Veterans Day takes on added urgency.

The old doughboy, as U.S. infantrymen were known in World War I, was among scores of veterans and families of servicemen who gathered Monday at Patriotic Hall in Los Angeles for a special Veterans Day broadcast on KABC radio by talk-show host Michael Jackson.

Inside the auditorium, the crowd listened as Jackson interviewed CBS news correspondent Charles Kuralt and other guests, ranging from Roche to a 4-year-old boy whose Marine father is in Saudi Arabia as part of Operation Desert Shield.

Wives with husbands abroad tried to control their children. Members of American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars posts wore their caps and ribbons. Street people drifted in to partake of the free lunch; some, they said, were Vietnam veterans.

“We started out feeding families as our guests. But what it’s really turned into, we’re feeding the homeless vets who occupy this area,” said Nelkane Benton , KABC’s director of community relations. “This is even better than we thought it would be.”

On Veterans Day, “you feel proud to be American, regardless of your present situation,” said James Williams, a Vietnam veteran, who said he has been homeless for two years.

In addition to its commercial sponsors, the radio show promoted the station’s “Operation EGBOK”--an effort to gather 1-million Christmas cards for American troops in the Persian Gulf. EGBOK is an acronym for “Everything Is Going to Be OK.” Someone placed a giant poster for the cause beneath a portrait of the ill-fated crew of the space shuttle Challenger.

Regardless of politics or strategic considerations, many veterans said it was important to support servicemen and servicewomen overseas.

“The biggest thing that hurt us in Vietnam wasn’t the bullets or the shrapnel, it was the lack of support from the American people,” said Simba Roberts, who wore camouflage clothing for the occasion. “We have to support our soldiers--not the war, not the government--but the individual soldiers.”

Among those who gathered at Patriotic Hall, a recurring theme was the hope that diplomatic efforts would succeed in averting war. But there was little optimism.

“He was supposed to be home in January,” Angela Register, watching over three young sons, said of her husband in Saudi Arabia. The rotation of forces has recently been canceled. “I just hope nothing happens. . . . God knows I need him home; the boys need him. Whatever happens is is God’s hands, and He has to bring him home safely. That’s what we pray.”

Another recurring theme was an expression that, if there is combat, American military action should be swift and decisive.

“It looks like we’re headed that way, because of the buildup” of forces, said Sharon Deehan, a Woodland Hills hospital administrator who served as a nurse in Vietnam. “I think we need to get in, do what we have to do, and get the hell out.”

Roche also expressed hope for either a peaceful resolution or a short war.

“You know the Vietnam vets and this post-traumatic stress syndrome? We had shellshock,” Roche said.

The old veteran smiled when he displayed his scarred shins and throat burned by mustard gas, and a finger, its tip torn off by a German bullet.

Eighty-year-old Elsye Roche, wooed 57 years ago with tales of the Great War, expressed hope that her grandson will not have such stories or souvenirs.

Does she think war is coming?

“I just really don’t know--I’m not into all the intricacies,” she said. “I just wish we can make up our minds, one way or the other.”