Saratoga Stereopticon
Uniform is just a symbol of the real significance
by Willys Peck
OK, OK, call it an ego trip, this business of wearing my World War II uniform to the Saratoga Memorial Day exercises; showing off by proving I can still get into it and all that (the secret: four inches let out at the waist). I suppose there is a touch of vainglory, but there's certainly much more involved that is of real significance.
For one thing, the annual rite sponsored by the Saratoga Foothill Club is a Saratoga tradition, a very important one that goes back more than 70 years. This year's format will be the same: a brief 9:30 a.m. ceremony at the Memorial Arch (I still think yellow is the wrong color for a structure commemorating those who faced death or were killed in war), followed by a procession to Madronia Cemetery where the principal service will start at 10 a.m.
The practice of wearing service uniforms to the Memorial Day exercises really got established in the years just after World War II when Saratoga had a plentiful supply of high-ranking brass: admirals, colonels and a couple of generals. As an infantry rifleman who never advanced beyond private first-class I figured I was lowering the tone somewhat, but that discharge emblem, the so-called ruptured duck, was a great social leveler.
For my dad, Memorial Day always had a special significance. An older brother of his, a captain of Engineers, was killed in action a month before the Armistice that ended World War I. As a 39-year-old college professor with two small children, this brother was not a man who had to go off to war; he volunteered.
That sharpened my dad's resolve to get to France, too, and he signed up with what was then the U.S. Air Service. When he graduated from ground school as a 32-year-old aviation cadet the word was that there weren't enough airplanes overseas for all the pilots being trained. If you want to get to France, the cadets were told, join the Balloon Corps.
This branch of service, while not outright suicidal, was close to it. Observation balloons, hydrogen-filled gasbags run up on cables a couple of thousand feet so telephone-equipped observers riding in little baskets could direct artillery fire, were a prime target for German aviators. The term "sitting duck" may not have been coined for them, but they certainly fit the definition. However, the war was over before my dad completed training. Otherwise I might not be here.
So Memorial Day in post-World War II Saratoga found him donning his officer's uniform, complete with Sam Browne belt, riding breeches and leather puttees, marching to the cemetery and throwing a salute to Maj. Gen. Grote Hutcheson, Saratoga's resident military celebrity. Gen. Hutcheson, an 1884 West Point classmate of Gen. John J. "Black Jack" Pershing and personal acquaintance of six U.S. presidents, lived here at the Saratoga Inn from 1924 until his death 24 years later. He was a fixture at the Foothill Club's Memorial Day ceremonies, and I well remember his 1946 speech at Madronia, centering on the then-new United Nations. "Give it a chance," was his message.
I like to think that this year's ceremonies will reflect much of the past, because that is what the day is all about--remembrance.
It was with this thought in mind that, sorting through some accumulated papers, I ran across a copy of a poem I had written shortly after starting Army basic training in 1943. It's the kind of thing one would expect from a 19-year-old who wasn't sure what was coming next.
A Soldier's Prayer
Oh Lord, when comes my turn to take up arms
against my fellow man in deadly strife,
I seek no heavenly release from harm
that should befall, endangering my life.
But Lord, I seek the strength that's born of trust
in Thee and in the cause for which I fight.
The job I do is toward a world more just,
where right alone shall be the source of might.
Let not the crisis find me faint of heart,
nor falsely boasting willingness to dare.
But may they say of me, "He did his part;
the time that he was needed, he was there."
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Saratoga, California Since 1975
