Veterans Day

We’d parked behind a cow and this was important because otherwise, we would have no idea how to find the car again. There are only two cows in Fort Lauderdale and ours was stationed outside a tee shirt emporium. I’m not too sure what the one has to do with the other but doubtless there is a story behind this strange linking. The other one I stands outside an Argentinian Restaurant. This would make sense apart from the fact that that particular cow is a milking Guernsey cow and therefore safe from the steak eaters. Like the White Rabbit, we were late for a very important date. The first official Veterans Day Parade was marching down West Broward Boulevard and was due to arrive at the River Walk at 11am. We got there by 11.15 just in time to see the last of the busses bearing the wives and those who could no longer undertake the long march, arriving in the square. It was a sad disappointment and for a while, we wandered about looking at the army jeeps and admiring the smart uniforms of the varying forces who were now milling about and seeking out their families. But as we strolled, we became aware that poppies were being proudly worn in smart dark blazers that were bedecked with rows and rows of medals. These were not American servicemen and women, and it dawned on me that a large contingent of my countrymen had marched alongside their cousins from across the pond. People are quick to say that in the light of football hooligans, there is very little to be said for the British travelling abroad. Well let me tell you that never have I been more proud and more delighted than to meet up with this fine body of people. Led by their organiser-in-Chief Frank Fallows, the British Korean Veterans Association were upholding all that is admirable and fine about the United Kingdom. These were not the stiff-upper-lipped British military types that seem so unapproachable, but a cheerful, friendly outgoing crowd with the usual quips and sparks of humour that cannot be copied or transplanted to any other race on earth. Telling them of my occasional newspaper column, they cheerfully gathered up wives, husbands and friends, and standing in serried ranks up a flight of steps, I was rewarded with a photograph that says so much. Even here under the brilliantly blue warm skies of Florida, everything about them said “We are British and proud of it” and I in turn was proud to have met them all. I had wanted to be here on this special day to represent my father who has suffered a stroke and is no longer able to take his place in what he so endearingly described as “the bump and tinkle” parade. From their place at the War Memorial in a little Buckinghamshire Village, the decreasing number of elderly veterans of the 2nd World War would gather each year and salute their comrades in arms who had died as young men and women, and then, girding their loins, they would make it back up the hill to the pub for a well earned pint and a great story telling session. I had always longed to be able to gather up my brothers, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren to stand at his side and honour the deeds and sacrifices that have given me and my generation the chance to live such a full and happy life. This is sadly no longer an option, but in meeting that fine group of people today, it made me realise that as long as there are those who remember, those who care and people who respect what has gone before, there is a chance that we may still respect and honour what is now ours because of them. We found our car again. We accosted a taxi driver and asked him if he knew where the cow was, and he took us there as straight as a die. He spoke warmly of the forces that had fought alongside his own countrymen and he shook us all by the hand, and I was proud to be British.