Local Veterans Give Voice To America's Past And Present Warriors
Sculpture from the Vietnam Women's Memorial, Wash. D.C.
Members of Chapter 39 of Veterans For Peace will again commemorate Veteran's Day with readings of battlefield letters and statements written by US service personnel fighting America's wars from 1776 through Afghanistan.
"The personal experience of warfare, told by a person actually involved and written to persons who are dear or dearest to the warrior, often reveal war's grim realities more realistically and objectively than is usually conveyed by TV and other media," said Mary Reynolds Powell, Chapter 39 spokesperson. "The truth these real warriors know is that there's no glory in killing other human beings. Or being killed by them."
Powell served as an army nurse in Vietnam.
"By recreating the personal voices of these veterans, some of whom perished in combat, we return them to current reality for some brief time, both to honor them, and to learn from them," she said.
Veterans For Peace will host its readings at two Cleveland sites: Saturday, November 10 at 3 p.m. at Lakewood Public Library, 15425 Detroit Avenue and Sunday, November 11 at 3 p.m. at Shaker Heights Main Library, 16500 Van Aken Blvd.
VFP's mission, in part, is to increase public awareness of the true costs of war, and to abolish war as an instrument of public policy. The performance program cites the 1953 statement of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, former commander of all Allied armies in World War II, and later president of the United States: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
Veterans For Peace is a national non-profit 501(c)3 educational organization comprised of men and women veterans of the US military from all service organizations. Non-veterans who support the work of VFP may become Associate Members.
Visit VFP website at www.veteransforpeace.org for more information, or contact vfp_chapter39@yahoo.com.