An estimated 300 people — veterans, their survivors and other supporters — turned out for the much-anticipated dedication of a monument to the nation’s veterans yesterday, on Veterans Day.

Late Tuesday afternoon, Virginia Christian visited the memorial alone on the eve of its dedication.

“I came today to see it in case I couldn’t find a way to get in tomorrow,” Christian said. “I think this is such a beautiful monument, and best of all, it’s a memorial to our veterans, not a war memorial.”

Christian is aunt to Calistoga Mayor Jack Gingles, a veteran who has a brick in the new memorial.

“That this place was built where it is really honors the memory of people who’ve served the country and kept our freedom,” Christian said, “and it’s wonderful that just over there, kids are playing and having fun. It’s in a place that’s alive, not over in some corner where it would be forgotten.”

During yesterday’s ceremony, the key speaker, Jim Barnes, reading from a prepared statement praised the sacrifices of America’s veterans, and said all veteran look forward to the day when there is no more war.

Long time coming

Calistoga’s veterans first came together to hash out the idea of a monument that would honor veterans, not wars, in the late 1990s. The veterans were not seeking financial help, though funding was available — and the city received the idea with open arms.

“We’ve received support of every city council since we first proposed the idea,” said one of the project’s organizers, Paul Coates, commander of the Calistoga chapter of the American Legion. “There are so many people who have stepped up to make this possible, with donations of labor or materials or both.”

Stopping by late Tuesday, at the same time Christian was making a close inspection of the bricks honoring veterans from the Revolutionary War through the U.S. Civil War to Desert Storm, another volunteer, Douglas Sterk, stopped by to admire the work of so many volunteers.

“I helped place the bricks with all the names on them, and there were some that moved me, like the one honoring a man who was a prisoner of war in the Pacific during almost the entire World War II,” a brick Sterk pointed out during an impromptu tour. “Here’s another one, dedicated to the memory of five brothers. Four came home from the Second World War, while one of them didn’t make it.”

But the brick that moved the local Boy Scout leader and engineer the most was the brick in honor of a veteran who survived the Bataan Death March.

The March

The Bataan Death March began April 10, 1924 in the Philippines and was later accounted as a Japanese war crime. It was a 60-mile march that occurred after the three-month Battle of Bataan — part of the Battle of the Philippines that took place just months after America entered WWII.

The march involved the forcible transfer of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in the Philippines. The prisoners of war were driven like cattle from the Bataan peninsula to prison camps. The march was characterized by wide-ranging physical abuse and murder, and resulted in very high fatalities among the prisoners and civilians along the route by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan.

Beheadings, cut throats and casual shootings were the more common actions, according to various history sources — compared to bayonet stabbings, rapes, disembowelments, numerous rifle butt beatings and a deliberate refusal to allow the prisoners food or water while keeping them continually marching for nearly a week in tropical heat. Falling down or an inability to continue moving was tantamount to a death sentence, as was any protest or expression of displeasure.

The veteran for whom the brick was dedicated died in 1999. That brick, like many, carries a personal message. This one indicates the veteran survived the war, but was never the same.

A decade-long dream

More than 10 years in the making, the monument to all veterans contains some 1,800 brick pavers that are part of the monument, and so far, about 300 inscribed names of veterans, some going as far back as the Revolutionary War.

“Any veteran can be honored here,” said Jim Barnes, one of the project’s chief organizers who has continually defended the project as a tribute to anyone “who has ever worn the uniform of the United States.”

The monument was paid for with about $150,000 in cash donations. Additional donated services and time totaled more than $100,000.

The memorial, a 2,500-square-foot plaza, is across the parking lot from Calistoga’s new pool in the 10-acre Logvy Park.

Sterk, like Barnes, expects children will be playing on the memorial plaza.

“That would be wonderful,” Sterk said. “I can’t think of a better way to pay tribute to anyone who has served our nation.”

There was a solemn note to the ceremony as Barnes pointed out that the Coast Guard C-130 airplane that collided with a Marine helicopter in San Diego while searching for a missing fisherman in late October, was to have participated in a flyover for yesterday’s ceremony.

“When we add more names to our family of veterans to the memorial next spring, their names will be added,” said Barnes. Their names were read, and as each name was read, VFW Commander Paul DuBois rang a bell in their memory. A member of the Coast Guard Reserve, along with the widow of the late Bill Albright, one of the three lead veterans who conceived the idea for the memorial, placed a wreath on the column dedicated to the Coast Guard.

A beautiful place

“This is such a beautiful memorial, and its location is wonderful,” Christian said. “I know some people wanted it way over there, in the corner, but it’s perfect here.

“Here, the children can come see it, and hopefully ask some questions about war, what it does to people,” she said. “And they can learn about the sacrifices that were made by all these men and women to assure the freedoms they are enjoying while they are over there playing their games — I so appreciate the effort to build this memorial.”

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