Terrorist Attacks Bring Vets Renewed Respect

The two teens paused before the ornate plaques in the lobby of Pelham Memorial High School and did something they had never done before.

They read aloud the names, engraved in gold.

Frederick H. Allen. George M. Clegg. W.H. Osborne.

Who were these men? What had they fought for? And died for?

“I never thought much about veterans before,” said 17-year-old Troy Carden. “To me, they were just old guys who rolled out their medals and flags once a year.”

That was before terrorist attacks catapulted this country into war and made Troy and his friends wonder about the names they had never noticed, men from their tiny Westchester County town who served in World Wars I and II.

Now, as Pelham mourns the loss of nine residents in the Sept. 11 attacks, the youths wonder: Might they one day be veterans too?

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, veterans, like firefighters and police officers, have gained a new stature in a changed world. A world where their children ask them questions about war they never asked before, and their grandchildren ponder an uncertain future in a way many veterans themselves did when they were teens.

It’s as though, says one former Marine, Sept. 11 made veterans of us all.

This Veterans Day, remembrances will be different, tinged by terrorism and tragedy and war. There will be more flags planted at the graves of veterans, more services, more talk of wars past and present.

For Tom Weissenborn of Roseland, N.J., it is a time to remember the day when his father called him from a game of touch football and ordered him to sit by the radio. “Listen to this speech,” his father said. “It will change your life.”

And so, Weissenborn listened to President Franklin D. Roosevelt deliver his “date which will live in infamy” speech, a day after the Dec. 7, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor. Weissenborn was 15. By the time he enlisted in the Army Air Corps at 18, some of his buddies from high school had already died in combat.

Their deaths strengthened Weissenborn’s resolve. Besides, he had little choice. The draft meant that fighting for your country was what 18-year-olds did.

“We were all pumped up. We were answering the call,” he said. “And everyone we knew was answering it too.”

Weissenborn loved the excitement of being a tail-gunner on a B-29 bomber, thrilled watching the flames as Tokyo burned. He never thought about people racing in panic from the buildings he had bombed, never thought about the dust and the fear and the horror.

Until Sept. 11th.

Weissenborn, a stockbroker who still works a full day at age 75, was in his lower Manhattan office, a few blocks from the World Trade Center, when the towers collapsed. He stumbled into the streets, black with smoke, thick with terror.

“That is when it hit me,” said Weissenborn, who lost several friends in the attacks. “And I thought to myself, So this is what it was like for the people when we dropped those bombs.”

Other veterans from other wars talk of memories being ignited too. “It’s like there was a genie in the bottle,” said Joe Hoban, a 54-year-old manager for a real estate company, from Suffern, N.Y. “And the cork was pulled out when those towers collapsed.”

Hoban, served as a sergeant with the 101st Airborne Division and was a paratrooper in the Vietnam War. He was wounded three times. He saw friends die. And yet Hoban, like so many other veterans from Vietnam, could never bring himself to talk to his family about the horror. Until now.

A few weeks ago, Hoban went to a Yankee game with his 29-year-old daughter, Tricia. He put on his veterans cap and pins. He wore them proudly. And Tricia watched in amazement as people saluted her father with a respect she had never seen before.

After the game, father and daughter talked, really talked, about war and its consequences, about terrorism and fear. And, for the first time, Tricia understood why it had been so hard, all those years, for her father to open up.

“It’s like the men working at ground zero,” Tricia said. “You have to see some of this horror yourself in order to understand it.”

Today, she says, “I am prouder than ever of my father and of the sacrifices he made.”

The same patriotic spirit has swept over many young people who never thought much about war before.

At New Canaan (Conn.) High School, retired English teacher and World War II veteran Albert Knaus was recently invited back to talk to a group of seniors.

Six students sat around a table, fired up with patriotism, bursting with pride. They would fight for their country today if they were asked. They were just like Knaus was when he was 18, a skinny kid with a thirst for adventure, who joined the Marines because he wanted to be cool. He’d go to war. He’d fight for his country. He’d see some action and return a hero.

Did you see any action? they asked, clearly disappointed when Knaus said no. He spent most of the war as a radio operator on a base in Hawaii.

“I was lucky,” he said. “I had friends your age who died.”

Knaus, now 75, described how he was reading comics with a friend when he first heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. He recalled his shock as he listened to the radio reports about the 2,400 who perished, the anger he felt, the bewilderment that his country had seemed so unprepared.

“All the emotions that you have probably been feeling since Sept. 11th,” he said.

The bell rang and the students picked up their bags. But they didn’t dash madly into the corridor as usual. They paused. One by one, they shook Knaus’ hand.

At Pelham Memorial High School, Troy Carden and his friends Pat Cartelli and Chrissy Greco have also spent a lot of time lately discussing war. The teens all know someone who died in the World Trade Center.

Fifteen-year-old Chrissy has agonized over how to comfort her best friend, whose father, a firefighter, was lost. She wishes her grandfather was still alive. She knows he would have understood. Because when he was her age, his whole world was changed by war too.

Chrissy regrets not asking her grandfather more about his experiences. She knows he was awarded a Purple Heart. She knows he was in Africa. But she doesn’t know much about what he did there.

“The funny thing is that even though he is gone, I sort of feel a connection to him now that I never felt before,” she said.

Pat Cartelli speaks of that sense of connection to a broader community too. He felt it at Boy Scout camp in New Mexico this summer, when things were good and he was happy and his whole future stretched out like a long, lazy summer.

Now the quiet, thoughtful 15-year-old wonders if that was his last summer of innocence.

Fighter jets have screamed overhead at football practice, and it seems as if every building in town is draped in flags.

Pat comes from a proud family of Italian immigrants who have served in the military for generations. His grandfather worked in the War Department. His great uncle was in the Navy during World War II. His father, Vincent Cartelli Jr., an Army veteran, is commander of Pelham’s American Legion Post 50.

For a school project two years ago, Pat had to write about an important event in history. He chose the Vietnam War. His dad introduced him to a friend who had fought there.

“The stories were so awful, I can’t even remember all the details,” Pat said. “I just remember they were a lot more real than ‘Saving Private Ryan.’ ”

The veteran told him about a friend from Pelham who was killed in Vietnam. A man named John House. A year ago Pat and his dad went to Washington and found House’s name on the wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

On Veterans Day, father and son will attend a local memorial service. Pat will listen as his dad makes a speech about war and death and sacrifice. And he will bow his head and pray for American forces in Afghanistan.

But Pat still puzzles over the contradiction: Weren’t the sacrifices of all these veterans supposed to have protected his generation from war?

He wonders about the message of some students in school who say war achieves nothing but more horror. He wonders about a group called Veterans for Peace.

“It really scares me, the idea of having a war on American soil,” Pat says. “It really scares me that so many more people might die.”

His father sees no alternative. Vincent Cartelli has no doubt about how he would feel if his son had to go to war. At 54, he would go himself if he could.