Veterans for Peace mourn all of the war dead

Presenter: Veterans for Peace spoke on Memorial Day, and independent videographer Todd Boyle was there. Here is President Shelley Corteville:

Shelley Corteville: First, I want to welcome everybody for coming. I’m the president of the Henry F. Disney Memorial Chapter 159 for Veterans for Peace.

And I want to point out that we have Veterans for Peace members back here. And at some point, I would love for you all to take a moment and look at their placards. Because what their placards show is, first, we’ve been in the Gulf since 1990. And their placards show the deaths of military personnel, civilian people—which is important that we in America know that, because often Americans are only concerned about the deaths of our military personnel.

And we must understand that war affects all people and the deaths of all people on both sides of the war are important. And often what we think is people on the other side are different from us and they aren’t. People from the other side are not evil. We don’t think of our people as evil, therefore their people aren’t evil.

They too are following what their government says, just as our military does, follows what our government says. And what we’re indoctrinated to believe. So really, it’s no different. And we as Americans need to embrace that. It’s important. 

We don’t want to say that the people of our military are not important. All of us have served. All of us understand that sacrifice. All of us understand that duty. All of us understand taking that oath and what it means. 

All of us also understand what it means when our sisters and brothers die. All of us do. Whether it be in combat or whether it be by suicide because they can no longer carry the burden of what they’ve done or what has happened in the military.  That’s important to know because that’s what happens on the other side. 

What’s also important to know is it extends out to families just as it does to the other side. The reality is we don’t lose civilians to death. We don’t. We aren’t losing babies to death, not in a way that people are losing children and mothers and fathers are losing their lives in wars that they didn’t ask for in their countries. We must understand that.

So I’m going to explain the symbolism that we have here. First, the military boots. The symbolism of the boots is the ultimate sacrifice of who died and who wore the boots to signify the journey and the physical toll of the soldier who wore them. 

The red rose symbolizes the undying love and deep respect of those keeping the faith for the person who died or did not return. It ensures that the individual is not just remembered as a casualty, but the person was a deeply loved individual. 

The flag represents a nation who is grateful for the freedom and patriotism. It signifies that the soldier gave their life defending their country and its values.

So together, these all symbolize a memorial to the soldier and to express the nation’s gratitude and heavy emotional cost, both to the nation and the families that ended up giving the lives of their loved ones. 

Now, I’m going to tell you this flag sitting there, came from one of our associate members of Veterans for Peace. Well, she didn’t serve in the military. Her husband did, and he lost his life. He was in Vietnam. She offered to bring his flag, and that’s a really special thing to do. She and her family have suffered a great deal. She has a long family history of members that served.

So we do have to remember the cost, the human cost, and the human cost in other countries. And that’s part of why we’re here today, that human cost is not worth all these wars. 

So I want to introduce John Henry. He’s a Vietnam vet. 

John Henry: I’m John Henry, and I served in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969. And every Memorial Day, it kind of kicks my butt. I lost some good friends. 

But anyway, we’ve been doing this holiday since 1868, right after the Civil War, where the most Americans who have ever died in a war, 600,000 died in that war. And 50,000 American lives, civilian lives, were lost in the Civil War.

Today is a day that we honor the military who died in active duty. So we look at Iran, and 13 service members have died. And they are estimating that 1,701 Iranian civilians, all innocents, were victims of the war. And the short war began in February, 1,701.

So many, well, a few of the veterans who are here today are wearing signs primarily about the Gulf Wars that we’ve been having since 1990 and the number of American military who’ve died and kind of juxtaposed that with the civilians of those countries that have died.

And like Shelley, I’d like to remind us that we’re talking about real flesh and human people who are innocent civilians. So today we honor the children and the young and old people who are not military, but were simply unfortunate were in the way of our bombs as they exploded on their schools, homes, mosques, hospitals, stores, wherever they were when our deadly weapons rained down.

If you look at these signs closely, you’ll be staggered on how many civilian deaths occur in each war.

In Iraq, 4,431 Americans military died. And you have to weigh that against the 300,000 civilian deaths. In the Gulf War, 382 American service people and 3,000 civilians. And the war I fought in: 36,574 U.S. military were killed, and approximately 2 million Vietnamese died.

We need to honor these, all the dead, on Memorial Day. We cannot honor our dead only.

Our hearts are saddened by their loss, but we cannot ignore the true costs of war. Many, many people are dying in war. In many cases, there are 90% more civilian than military casualties. It is safer to be in the military than a civilian in those countries. 

So we ask you to reflect on what war dead means. All the dead caused by war. Make this day a memorial for all those killed and others slowly dying. And I can point to a few of us up here who have Agent Orange in our stream. And we’re slowly dying. 

It was a great song by Kate Wolf saying, ‘I didn’t know they killed me in Vietnam.’ You know, they’re walking the streets. So what do you have? You have the walking dead, the homeless vets, the vets who are hung up on drugs and alcohol.

The true cost of war, 66,400 vets committed suicide last year. William Stafford, the poet laureate of Oregon, wrote, Wars we haven’t had have saved many lives. 

I’d like to give you one final set of numbers. The total number of those killed since the Revolutionary War, from the Revolutionary War to Iran, are 1,304,000 military and 48,128,000 civilians.

So we honor the dead today, the military dead, and we honor the civilian dead. So I’m gathered here today as a Veteran for Peace, telling you that I’m going to continue working for peace. and primarily right now to stop the war in Iran. Thank you very much for listening.

Shelley Corteville: Well, that’s how some people feel, and that’s okay. We can’t really do anything about that, but that’s why we’re here. That’s exactly why we’re here. 

And that doesn’t make them bad people. That doesn’t make them horrible people. It just means we still have a job to do, and that’s making peace and working towards peace. 

And part of that is recognizing that war is not the answer. If war was the answer to peace, we wouldn’t be having any more wars. But we keep having wars because we just can’t seem to figure that out. 

So I’m going to explain the symbolism of all of these shoes and the baby dress with the flowers.

First, the names and ages of the 165 of those killed. You have a paper—I can’t, I would like to say that I can name the primary school and say it properly, I cannot and I really don’t want to say it improperly and be disrespectful so it was a primary school that our strike hit in Minab, Iran. 

Our strike. We say we have surgical strikes. There’s no such thing as a surgical strike in war. There is no such thing. At strike, at least 165 people were killed. Most of those were children.

One of those was a two-month-old baby. All of these shoes represent the children and the adults that were killed in that strike. It can easily be representative of all of the civilians that have been killed in Iran. The baby dress represents the baby.

I researched to find out what the Iranians give to honor the families for the death of their loved ones. And they give a bouquet of white roses. white chrysanthemums, and white lilies.

And although I know that red tulips represent the martyrs, I just couldn’t put red tulips because it’s hard for me to grasp the civilians, the children, the adults as martyrs, the baby as a martyr.

So I chose instead to honor the children and adults and the baby with the bouquet that the Iranians give to their love to loved ones who have lost a loved one. I really hope that this has an impact and it helps people to understand that it is so important to honor the dead in other countries. 

Now Frank, I also want to say that the only reason that we aren’t calling the names to all of you is because we do not wish to be disrespectful and say the Iranian names incorrectly. That’s why we’ve handed everybody a paper that lists the 61 Iranian names that they were able to name just a few days after the strike. 

So Frank is going to read a very poignant poem.

Frank:  Hello, everyone. Before I read this poem, it says, ‘Don’t mention the children.’

And I’m a Vietnam vet. I went back to Vietnam 12 times because what I had done, I had photographed 11 little kids in over 36 years. I stared at that picture and wondered, what happened to these children? I came home. They are still there caught in the middle of a war. 

So I found nine of the 11 kids over eight trips going back and forth. And they were so grateful that I came to see them because they were so happy that I came back to wonder how they were doing. And I also apologized to them for some of the atrocities that we did when we were in that war. 

And since then, I’ve become great friends with them. I help out their kids and grandkids, and I’m so grateful that they survived. And they are so grateful that I came back to at least see how they’re doing.

It was quite an adventure going back and forth, showing the picture in villages and going through rice paddies to find these kids. And so that was my way of healing.

But the name of this play and it doesn’t mention—doesn’t mention the name of the author. It says, ‘Don’t mention the children.’ 

Don’t mention the children.
Don’t name the dead children. 
The people must not know the names of the dead children.
The names of the children must be hidden.
The children must be nameless.
The children must leave this world having no names.
No one must know the names of the dead children.
No one must say the names of the dead children. 
No one must even think that the children have names.
People must understand that it would be dangerous to know the names of the children. 
The people must be protected from knowing the names of the children. 
The names of the children could spread like wildfire. 
The people would not be safe if they knew the names of the children.
Don’t name the dead children.
Don’t remember the dead children. 
Don’t think of the dead children.
Don’t say dead children. 

Thank you.

Shelley Corteville: Thank you, Frank. We want you to know the names of the dead children. We don’t have to be protected from knowing the names of the dead children, ever.

So we are obviously calling for an end of war. We would very much like for all of you to contact our lawmakers and continue to contact our lawmakers and to join us in calling for an end to war. 

Join a group that is working to stop the war. There are many groups here in Eugene, Oregon. There are many groups all over the country you could get involved in. There are a lot of things happening. 

And we cannot have peace at home without peace abroad. When we are destroying things abroad, it makes it okay for us to destroy things here because it’s normalized. We get used to it. So we’re asking people to not get used to it. ICE is part of the war. It’s right here at home. We want the war stopped in Iran.

So please find a group, joining the goal of stopping war. And I want to thank you all for coming. 

Presenter: That’s Shelley Corteville of Veterans for Peace speaking on Memorial Day. You can watch complete recordings of events featuring Veterans for Peace on Todd Boyle’s YouTube channel.