Korean War Veteran Arnold Silverman delivers speech at Memorial Day Ceremony at Monument Point
Photos by Scott Brashier
The following speech was presented by Arnie Silverman, Korean War Veteran and Honored Patriot of the Year for Laguna Beach’s 53rd annual Patriots Day Parade, at the Memorial Day observance at Heisler Park yesterday, May 27.
Good morning. On behalf of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars posts here in Laguna Beach, I welcome you to this Memorial Day observance. Rather than repeat the old, patriotic platitudes that apply to this day, I thought I would get a little personal and also readdress some relevant issues I’ve discussed in the past.
For me, this is not a holiday and it certainly is not a day of celebration. It is instead a day of somber reflection and remembrance. Each year at this time, I recall my brothers who fought beside me in that bitter Korean cold but did not return home. And we were indeed brothers. With no thoughts of ethnicity, race, faith, color or country of origin, we protected, looked after, and comforted one another.
Most of those in my unit were draftees. We did not volunteer for service but once having been inducted, like our fathers, brothers, sisters, and other family members and friends who fought in the war of the 1940s, we felt duty bound, if not conditioned by their examples, to honor our commitment to our country.
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Arnie Silverman
We climbed with full field packs, rifles, and heavy mortar components seemingly every one of those perpendicular Korean hills and ravines, survived monsoon flooding, withstood the frostbite conditions of below zero temperatures, and cutting-cold winds, always under fire; always facing an always higher ground-dug in-positioned foe. The artillery fire was constant – you never knew if it was theirs or a short round from our side. And if one of those shells had, as we used to say, your name on it, you were done; you were meat.
The skirmishes were vigorous and deadly. On dark nights, you could not see who or what was coming at you and judged targets by sound only. Flares were used but they were ineffective. A cartridge flying by your ear or the scream of an artillery shell were particularly frightening. Worst of all was the agony of seeing a comrade fall in battle.
I think of platoon brothers, Booker, Aaron, Bill, Damien, Paul, Justin, and too many others. And especially at this time, I ask myself that old, haunting question, why them and not me? Why was I able to return home and not them? Was it luck? A blessing from above? I don’t have an answer to that. But each year, I remember and salute them.
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The crowd gathers at Monument Point
They and those we honor today are legacies of an unbroken chain of courageous, proud men and women who served our country with honor, who waged war so that we might know peace and security; who braved hardship and who paid the ultimate price or in Lincoln’s elegant words, gave their last full measure of devotion so that we might know freedom.
Since WWI, our armed forces have fought in ten plus wars: WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, Bay of Pigs, Grenada, Invasion of Panama, The Persian Gulf, Intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Invasion of Afghanistan, and the Invasion of Iraq. If you include Syria, it’s 11. Over 400,000 American troops were killed in WWII, over 36,000 troops died in the so-called “forgotten” war in Korea, over 58,000 died in Vietnam, and in Afghanistan and Iraq over 4,400 have died.
I believe if those fallen could speak to us, they would say that while they did not know they would be called upon to storm some impregnably defended beach, or battle in those Korean mountains, the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan or the deltas and dangerous jungles of Vietnam, they were willing to give all for their country; that while they did not know they would be called upon to lose their lives, they were willing to take that risk to save the lives of their brothers and sisters in arms and the nation at large. There was no thought of sacrifice. We/they did all that we could to defend and protect ourselves, but for some those measures did not prevail.
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Singing of National Anthem
Oliver Wendell Holmes, the great Supreme Court Justice and Civil War veteran, said in a Memorial Day speech in 1884, “But grief is not the end of all. I seem to hear the funeral march become a paean, a song of triumph. I see beyond the forest, the moving banners of a hidden column. Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us to think of life, not death – of life to which in their youth they lent their passion and joy.”
President Herbert Hoover, the 31st president, speaking of WWI in a Memorial Day ceremony in 1931, said “It was the transcendent fortitude and steadfastness of these men – those doughboys – who in adversity and in suffering through one of the darkest hours of our history held faithful to an ideal. Here men endured that a nation might live.”
On this day, when we honor and remember those heroes, something significantly positive if not beautiful happens nationally. Most Americans deeply divided now by all kinds of issues – political, business, immigration, health, economic, Constitutional, environmental, religious, and you name it – on this day gather together to remember with gratitude those fallen heroes and in so doing, we become even for just this one day a united, civil entity. It’s an inspiring thing to observe and be a part of. Wouldn’t it be something if we could maintain that unity and civility, whatever our differences now? Yes, it would be, but it is not happening. And why not?
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Assemblywoman District 74 Cottie Petrie-Norris
We have become tribal. We group now into separate segments of thought and values and seem locked in them. “Our” kind of people are under threat from “their” kind of people. The gaps between rich and poor, rural and urban, educated and less educated, black and white, left and right are widening. A question I keep pondering is when did bipartisan, compromise, collaboration, and negotiation become dirty words? We seem to see our adversaries as foes to be crushed. We seem to have no interest in alternate concepts. In our support of our current views, many of us are subject to spreading outrageous charges against those with whom we disagree. It seems too many of us have abandoned critical thinking and accept the credibility of those charges without thought.
We’ve always been a contentious people from Jamestown to the landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock to now. Disputation is in the national genome. Over the two plus centuries of the nation’s existence, with issues like a deadly civil war, union worker strikes, anti-war marches, women’s suffrage, prohibition, abortion, income distribution, even a farmers’ rebellion over a whiskey tax, we have as a people been in contention but have always found a way to resolve our issues and move forward as a nation.
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Veteran in attendance
When you read the writings of the Founders – Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington, Marshall, Adams and the rest – you learn that while all had their own preferences and prejudices, they joined together with compromises and “give and take” to create the Constitution. Jefferson intensely distrusted if not disliked Washington and Hamilton but worked with them and Adams in creating the systems and institutions of government we have today. You can also see the results of negotiation in the accomplishments of Lincoln, both Roosevelts, and even Lyndon Johnson who somehow persuaded a hostile, seemingly intractable segregationist block in both houses to approve the voting rights bill.
Have we strayed too far from the aspirations and principles of the founders and our great leaders? When I read polls that state that three-fourths of Americans believe we’re heading into a civil war or see the hate-filled attacks on religious minorities, or the hateful diatribes in the various hate-filled online forums, I wonder. But, on reflection with all of that, though we may disagree on all kinds of issues, when it comes to our belief in the basic, enriching principles, the sinews upon which this great nation was founded –
our cherished freedoms, our economic opportunities, the equal protection of our laws, the free franchise to choose who will govern, and all of the traditions and heritage as passed on to us by the Founding Fathers, I believe we as a nation are and remain united. But we must be vigilant. With political polarization accelerating here and worldwide, many democracies including ours are under contention and unless we all work to defend and preserve it, our democracy will not last as we know it.
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Arnie holds a folded flag
And we also need more civility in our daily lives. We recently lost one of the great leaders of Laguna, a patriot, Dave Connell. Dave was politically one of the most conservative people I ever met, and I guess you can call me a NY progressive. Almost every day, we would argue over the internet about some political issue but always with mutual respect and appreciation. Sometimes in humor, we would question each other’s sanity. But when we met, when we got together, we hugged and confirmed our friendship for each other. In short, while we had different values and beliefs and came from essentially different worlds, we remained the best of friends. And how about Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Anthony Scalia. Talk about being at opposite poles, they argued against each other on so many cases before the Court but stayed the best of friends until his death. And that is how it should be and that is the America the Founders had in mind and that is the America our fallen heroes fought and died for.
And finally, I ask everyone to support our veterans. We must never stop fighting for them. They never stopped fighting or sacrificing for us.
Thank you for joining us here and expressing your patriotism and respect for those we are honoring today. We remain a great country and with people like you will always be so. I salute all of you, and ask that you remember that…
Those who would disrespect our flag have never been handed a folded one.
October 27 is not a popular date in Laguna history. On this date in 1993, over 400 homes in our town were lost or severely damaged from a catastrophic fire resulting in over half a billion in damages, but fortunately there were no casualties. Tidbits lost his home on that day as well. 
