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Dale Olmstead hated to go.
From Aroostook County, he grudgingly went off to fight World War II in Europe, where he served in the military police.
But 60 years later, Olmstead gladly left his home in Woodland to join some 120,000 veterans who traveled to the nation’s capital for Saturday’s dedication of the National World War II Memorial on the National Mall, a 7.4-acre tribute to the 16 million who fought.
“They might call the other ones wars, but they’re not,” Olmstead said. “This was the only one that had to be.”
The Mall offered a last-of-a-lifetime scene of commemoration as veterans assembled by the sweeping monument of granite and bronze that was more than a decade in the planning.
“We have kept faith with our comrades from a distant youth,” said former Sen. Bob Dole, a driving force for the memorial. An Army lieutenant in the war, Dole lost the use of his right arm when a shell hit him while he served in Italy.
“What we dedicate today is not a memorial to war. Rather it is a tribute to the physical and moral courage that makes heroes out of farm and city boys, that inspires Americans of every generation to lay down their lives for people they’ll never meet,” Dole said.
Many veterans gripped canes. Others sat in wheelchairs. The hardiest among them grabbed their wives and danced in the aisles when 1940s swing music wafted over the crowd. Young people came up to old people and said thanks.
The music rekindled memories of their jitterbugging days for some of the veterans from the Caribou area who attended the ceremonies together.
Nine of the men stayed together during the event – which they watched from afar on widescreen TV – and they drew considerable attention from passers-by by their decision to wear their VFW uniforms.
In matching white shirts decorated with patches and emblems, gray pants and VFW hats, the Maine men were a visual reminder, for many in the crowd, of other soldiers in uniform.
“Everybody stopped to look at us. They really thought we were something special,” Clarence Bouchard, the local post commander, said Saturday, after he and the others returned from the dedication.
“They all came and shook our hands, and they’d say thank you for what we’d done,” Bouchard said. “I thought it was wonderful to have someone come right out of the blue sky and thank us for what we did.”
The amount of recognition was a surprise, but wonderful, Joe Bouchard said.
“What was the highlight for me? Just the fact that we’ve been recognized as part of the greatest generation that ever lived,” he said.
Ten members of the Lister-Knowlton VFW Post 9389 attended the dedication: Olmstead, both Bouchards and Albert J. Gahagan, Philip Tomlinson, David “Ovilla” Michaud, Rex Wyman, Wilfred Levasseur, Peter Miesburger and Donald Collins.
Person after person asked the group to pose for a picture or stopped to talk and offer good wishes. “There were so many people,” Wyman said, a little overwhelmed by the memory of it. “You just had a feeling of a lot of camaraderie.”
Of course, thousands of World War II veterans were unable to attend the events in Washington, but many were keenly aware of the occasion on Saturday afternoon.
In Rockland, 15 veterans of the 1941-45 war were treated to a luncheon at Winslow-Holbrook-Merritt Memorial American Legion Post, where their service and sacrifice were recalled.
Clayton Benson, 85, of Rockland sat with his son-in-law, who pointed out the small bar of fabric on Benson’s sweater indicating service in the five major campaigns of the war: North Africa, Sicily, France, Belgium and Germany.
As a member of the 9th Infantry Division under Gen. George Patton, he saw action in the major conflicts of the war, including D-Day.
“That’s a sad story,” he said, his eyes tearing up, and looking away. “Some good, some bad.”
Benson said he feared just two things: being taken prisoner and being shot in the abdomen.
“You see a man trying to stuff his guts back in …,” he said, shaking his head.
He believes most Americans do not understand the nature of war, and that his generation’s sacrifices are slipping from the nation’s memory.
“We’ve been in two or three wars we shouldn’t have been in,” he said, including Vietnam and the current conflict in Iraq.
Frederick Allen, 78, of Rockland graduated from high school in June 1944, and in July he was in the Navy. He served on the USS Shangri-La, an aircraft carrier in the Pacific that provided support for attacks on Okinawa, Saipan and Japan.
Allen saw action, “all I wanted to see,” he remembered.
He and two friends planned to stay in touch after the war, but one friend was killed in an airplane crash on the way home.
On the carrier, Allen’s job was to don an asbestos suit to help pilots out of their planes if they crashed on deck.
One memory that stands out is a fire below decks. He was lowered into the blaze to retrieve important papers. After signaling to be raised, Allen saw a hand reaching up for help, but it was too late because he was already being pulled up.
“I had nightmares for years,” he said, quietly crying. “I see that hand all the time.”
After the war, Allen traded the aircraft carrier for a lobster boat and hauled traps for 51 years.
“These were the modest sons of a peaceful country,” President Bush said during Saturday’s dedication. “They gave the best years of their lives to the greatest mission their country ever accepted.”
The idea for the memorial came nearly two decades ago, but it was only in 1993 that Congress authorized construction. Critics complained its large-scale design would spoil the vistas long enjoyed by visitors to the Mall. Courts eventually rejected the challenge.
The memorial features 56 granite pillars, each 17 feet high and representing the states, territories of that time and the District of Columbia, and two arches more than twice that height – Atlantic and Pacific – symbolizing the two theaters of the war. A wall with 4,000 sculpted gold stars commemorates the more than 400,000 Americans killed.
NEWS writers Rachel Rice and Tom Groening and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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