GREENFIELD — A smile beamed across Sgt. Maj. Peter Guiod’s face as a group of three young girls ran up to him, each in turn handing him a homemade card and saying “Thank you for your service!”
“Oh man, I’m tearing up a little now,” he said. All around the Veterans Memorial Mall on Main Street, other residents gave the same greeting to uniformed military veterans who had gathered for the town’s annual Veterans Day ceremony.
Guiod spoke to the hundreds who filled the mall to celebrate the service of the country’s military veterans. As the Pledge of Allegiance was recited and the national anthem played, tears rimmed the edges of some of their eyes, as well.
Guiod spoke of the adversity veterans have faced throughout history, including just after World War I when an encampment petitioning for bonuses from the federal government in Washington, D.C., was forcibly overrun by police and Army personnel.
“President Franklin Roosevelt said in 1933 that “No person because he wore a uniform must thereafter be placed in a special class of beneficiaries over and above other citizens,” Guiod said. “What he and others failed to realize at the time is that veterans were not asking to be part of a ‘special class.’ They just wanted a shot at the American dream they fought so hard to defend.”
Those benefits, he said, are a drop in the bucket compared to the financial and human costs of war.
Guiod said support for veterans can be shown through hiring them, donating to veterans programs or visiting patients in a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital.
While Americans’ feelings of gratitude and love toward veterans are most evident on Veterans Day, he said, it’s important to remember that they are defending the country every day.
“The heroism demonstrated time and again by veterans … is sometimes unnoticed by those of us who enjoy the security that their sacrifice had provided.”
Throughout those days, he said, the veterans’ families make sacrifices of their own, from abrupt geographic moves to career interruptions and bearing a disproportionate share of child care responsibilities.
“You cannot fight a war without veterans, and while the utopian idea of a society without war is appealing, we shouldn’t forget that wars have also liberated slaves, stopped genocide and toppled terrorists,” Guiod said. “Veterans have given us freedom, security and the greatest nation on Earth. It is impossible to put a price on that. We must remember them, we must appreciate them.”
You can reach Tom Relihan at: 413-772-0261, ext. 264 or trelihan@recorder.com
On Twitter, @RecorderTom