ARLINGTON — As members of Arlington American Legion Post 76 led the downtown parade and cemetery ceremonies on Memorial Day, they also looked ahead to other opportunities to honor America’s veterans.
In his remarks at the Arlington Cemetery, Cmdr. Chris Raboin cited the nearly one million American military members who have given their lives in service to their country, but the post has also set aside an upcoming separate ceremony for those who are prisoners of war or missing in action.
The Post 76 Legion Lounge, which welcomed vets and civilians alike to an open house and lunch May 25, will host the POW/MIA ceremony Sept. 18. This extended event follows Legion members’ construction of a special enclosure in their post for the POW/MIA table.
Raboin spoke at the cemetery of “the almost visible presence of those who have gone before,” then called upon those in attendance to renew their loyalty to their nation, their military and the loved ones whom their fallen comrades have left behind.
“Each cross and tomb and grave marker tells a story,” Raboin said. “They’re not just statistics. They’re real people with real families. We can honor them by remembering those families, who have also sacrificed. They’re children who still miss their parents, and parents who still grieve their children.”
Raboin cited Abraham Lincoln’s call to care for the widows and orphans of the Civil War, and lamented that once a year is not enough to memorialize America’s departed veterans, “because their families remember them every day.”
This year’s parade saw the surviving World War II, Korean and Vietnam war veterans truck emblazoned with new signs, encouraging citizens to vote by echoing Raboin’s sentiments that such freedoms would not exist without the sacrifices of this country’s veterans, living and dead.
Among those veterans was Lakewood’s Elwood Barker, 91, who moved to north Snohomish County after his two-year tour of duty through Europe in the Army during World War II.
“I didn’t know how to swim, so I joined the infantry,” said Barker, who served as a front-line wireman. “I missed D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, but a German sub torpedoed the ship taking us from Massachusetts to France in January of 1945.”
Barker nonetheless served in the 3rd Army under Gen. George Patton, and took pride in the fact that the Germans surrendered to the Americans rather than the Russians.
J.Y. “Dyc” Dycus, a fellow WWII vet, did a three-year stint in the U.S. Navy. When he was stationed at an air base near Arlington, he had all the milk he wanted to drink, even in the midst of dairy rations, because of the base’s contracts with local farms. By contrast, his tour of duty on board USS Salamaua, an escort carrier commissioned in 1944 and scrapped in 1946, offered him a more eventful history.
Dycus was there when a kamikaze aircraft crashed into the ship’s flight deck on Jan. 13, 1945, less than five months before it was hit by a typhoon June 5. The kamikaze bombs injured more than 80 crewmembers, killed 15 more and started fires on the ship’s flight and hangar decks. They also punched a hole in the starboard side at the waterline, flooding one of the engine rooms and causing its starboard engine to quit. For all the damage done by that aircraft, Dycus admitted to being far more shaken by the typhoon.
“When that suicide flyer came at us, it was quick,” Dycus said. “That storm scared me more, because it lasted all night. Our planes went over the side, even after we’d tied them down with steel cables, and it even took out our gun sponsons. At one point, we were listing close to 50 degrees, and anything over 38 degrees is supposed to be bad news.”
The morning parade down Olympic Avenue included not only the Legion and members of Arlington Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1561, but also a representative of the U.S. Merchant Marine, the Arlington High School Marching Band and members of local troops of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, as well as a local Cub Scouts pack.
