Lest We Forget: Veterans Day 2017

Veterans Day 2017

My father, a Brit and proud officer in the British Navy, would have turned 100 today. Marking 11/11 every year is a double-dose of memory and melancholy, infused with the great joy and gratitude of having had the honor to be his son and share the experience of serving. Happy Birthday, Dad. Thank you for your service… and thanks to all those who put their lives on the line to protect their country.

I’m reposting two of my pieces from Veterans Days past.

If you see someone who served today, take a moment to shake their hand and thank them. Best, George

Lest We Forget

November 11, 2007 – Veterans Day took on added significance for me after Dad died in 1986. He was born on November 11^th, 1899 in Gorton, England. During WWI, Dad’s ship was torpedoed off the Irish coast. The U-boat surfaced and machine-gunned survivors in the water. He was grazed in the scalp and hit in his right knee. Only a handful of the crew survived. During WWII, he worked with British Naval Intelligence and later with the British Ministry of War Transport. He took great pride in being a Brit, and in his adopted country. He instilled that pride in my brother Ken and me.

For years, every Armistice Day (now Veterans Day) after he passed in 1986, at 10:30 AM, I would drive alone to the neatly tailored Memorial Park adjoining the Islip, Long Island, town hall, set on a large corner lot facing Main Street, to observe the ceremony honoring the men and women who gave their lives in defense of our country.

The ceremony is always simple and fast, yet each year the crowd dwindles. The weather alternates between blustery gusts with leaves blowing, to overcast with scudding gray clouds or occasionally rain and temperatures that chills and hints at the winter to come. Memorial statues and plaques with names and wars etched in stone are ever present throughout the park. Each year a speakers rostrum is set up at the back of the park. Members of the VFW and the Islip Town Supervisor deliver brief remarks. A band accompanies the singing of our National Anthem. Hats and caps are doffed. A member of the clergy leads us in prayer. A lone bugler sounds taps. The honor guard fires a rifle- volley. The flag on the Memorial Flag Pole is lowered to half-mast. At exactly 11:11AM a bell chimes at intervals as the flag is slowly raised to its original position.

The service is solemn. Those present include some in uniforms that no longer fit. Old proud veterans, some in wheel chairs, some on crutches, none to proud to shed a tear.

I’d stand each year by myself, on the edge of the sparse crowd alone with my thoughts and memories of Dad, and my brother Ken with whom I served aboard the USS Abbot (DD-629). He died in 1995. It’s a time to reflect and a time to take stock as the years pass by. To me, this has always been a very special occasion, an hour to be especially proud of my family and proud and humble to be an American.

This will be the first year I will not be there. We moved to Essex, Connecticut, last December. No matter where I am this year, I will pause at 11:11 on 11/11 and remember!

George. S.K. Rider

A Time Worth Remembering

At 17, my father, a Brit, joined the Merchant Marine and became a radio officer on a converted mine-sweeper. In November 1917, his ship was torpedoed off the Irish coast. The sub surfaced and machine-gunned the few crew members left alive. He was creased in the scalp by a bullet and bloodied in the right knee. Somehow my father survived.

He and my mother married years later; younger brother Ken and I came along. We moved back from England to the U.S. in 1937. The house they purchased in Brightwaters, Long Island, that we grew up in was plunk in the middle of a generous lot with adequate room on either side, front and back, for a small garden, lawn and trees. To the right as you faced the house, between the house and the edge of the lot, Dad insisted on having a flagpole with a yardarm.

As long ago as I can remember, Ken and I were steeped in the lore and ceremonial pomp of the flag. It became a rite of passage for my younger brother and me to raise the flag at dawn, lower the flag at sunset, and lower it halfway to honor the departed, never letting the flag touch the ground, all under Dad’s watchful eye. Dad’s respect for God, Country, the Navy and the flags was etched in us at an early age.

During WWII, Dad left Otis Elevator to join British Naval Intelligence and in 1940 transferred to the British Ministry of War Transport. He participated in the swap of 50 WWI U.S. destroyers for British territories in the Caribbean. Another story we heard as kids was the shipment of 100 mules to India with their tongues cut out so that they couldn’t be heard traveling through the brush.

On Sundays after church and lunch, Dad always tuned into CBS’s World News Round Up on the den radio. At 2:30pm on December 7, 1941, John Daly broke in with the news that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Dad was very calm, sorry for the devastation and loss of life, but overjoyed that we would be in it finally – that his beloved England would soon get the help it needed. He immediately left the den and went outside to lower the flags half way, the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack from the yardarm.

Dad worried constantly about his parents, two sisters and brother Ken, an officer in the Commandos fighting with the Gurkhas in India. We also heard of cousin Joe Wolfenden, then Lt. who received the Distinguished Service Cross for sinking German Submarine 401. To prove the kill they retrieved body parts and iced them for the trip home. Joe later captained the Cunard liner Coronia.

Dad diagrammed and showed us on a map where epic sea engagements took place; the sinking of HMS Hood; engagements between British and German cruisers and battleships; Scharnhorst and Gneisenau; the sinking of the German battleship Bismark; the cornering and eventual scuttling of another battleship, the Graff Spee, in Montevideo; and the sinking of the super battleship Tirpitz on April 9, 1941.

The Queen Elizabeth’s Captain Ernest Fall, Dad’s friend, visited us during layovers before returning to England with a fresh shipload of GI’s. She sailed without escort. Her speed enabled her to outrun the German subs. His house present was a rasher of Canadian bacon, in scarce supply here.

The war was our constant companion growing up. Pearl Harbor was indelibly imprinted on us all. Later, after the war was over, and we graduated from college, my brother Ken and I would serve together aboard the Destroyer, USS ABBOT (DD- 629), as officers in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, Ken from Brown, NROTC, and me from Yale, NROTC.

Mother received a letter from Mamie Eisenhower in 1956. She had written to the First Lady about Ike’s reelection.

Dear Mrs. Rider,

You were truly kind to write such a warm, friendly letter expressing your faith and confidence in the leadership of the President. Your devotion and loyal support mean a great deal, and I can’t tell you how comforting and encouraging it is to hear from the many who constantly keep us in their prayers, asking divine guidance for the President in all acts and decisions.

You certainly must be proud of your two sons on the U.S.S. Abbot for they are patriotically doing their part in serving their country.

With gratitude for your good will and my very best wishes always. Mamie Dowd Eisenhower

The world was a different place back then than it is today. People believed in and had respect for higher office, for the institutions that make our country great, and, above all, for the men and women who fight and put their lives on the line for their fellow citizens. It’s a time, indeed, worth remembering.

George S.K. Rider