The Pittsburgh Press (November 11, 1944)
I DARE SAY —
A time to remember
By Florence Fisher Parry
Today is a day to remember November 11.
I remember it. The whistles blew in our town, bells rang, people ran into the streets calling and laughing and embracing one another, the tears streaming down their cheeks.
Not all, though. Some sat back in the shadows of their rooms, their bodies bent forward in an odd hurt attitude and swaying slowly from the waist, the way great agony of heart takes hold of the body…
Even then, in their sudden awful pain, they did not know what had befallen them. it was too fresh, a strange merciful unrealness still pervaded their grief. Afterwards, long afterwards, the loss began to sink in. sometimes I think that death – the terrible COST of death – can never be computed until a generation passes – then the loss stands out clear.
That is why, when I pass the windows today and see the gold stars in the little flags, I “think such a pity of,” (as they say up home) the mothers, fathers, wives… It will not be for years that they will really realize what has befallen them. It is so hard to estimate the compound interest of one lost life in one single family! It keeps on growing, growing… IF he had not been killed… if… if… IF… it follows the whole long history of a family clan.
Stopped
Let us face it today – this is a proper day to face it. Germany has won a victory this year. She has stopped us. One-mile-a-day advance into her fortress – that has been the average progress. At this rate, how long, say? MAYBE it will be over in the spring, that canny prophet Churchill is saying to us now.
The spring! When spring comes ‘round, how many more gold stars? …
WHAT’S WRONG WITH US? WHAT IS THIS SOFTNESS IN US, that we will put up with this probability? Rise in the morning, go about our snug safe home front OWN affairs? Eat, spend, enjoy ourselves, relax, deny ourselves really nothing – Nothing! While there along the borders of Germany, winter seals up the fate of millions of OUR boys, OUR sons, OURS, OURS!
I talked to a woman who was on her way to the Red Cross Blood Bank. She’d lost her only son. How, they had not heard yet; he was dead, that’s all they knew. She was in a hurry, there was much to do down there, trying to substitute with walk-ins, volunteers off the street, those dozens of cancellations which every day defeat them in their desperate necessity of finding blood, more blood, to send our dying boys!
She said:
We can’t get donors anymore. We’re way below what we must have! There seems no way to re-arouse the people! At first, they gave; they came in droves; the Blood Bank did a thriving work, the mobile units came back loaded with blood donations. But lately we cannot seem to stir the people into believing that the greatest need is NOW, TODAY, TOMORROW!
Shame!
What is it, this awful national malady of apathy? Are we growing used to having our boys die? return maimed, useless, dependent, bitter in the growing knowledge that we DID let them down? The base hospitals and field hospitals and the perilous, packed first aid stations right at the battle line are packed, packed with American wounded who need blood. Sometimes it takes 16 units (that is, the equivalent of 16 pints of blood) for just the FIRST transfusion, and that one only the first of as many as 20 or 30 more transfusions! THAT’S JUST ONE of our wounded. It might take a pint of blood from each of 300 persons to save one life!
It’s Armistice Day. How dare we “celebrate” it; bow our heads before the lowered flag; pray; count ourselves one of the Home Front Army, and know that we have not made this one vital contribution, a pint of blood three, four, five times!
It’s Armistice Day. November. Winter. Our THIRD winter of war. It’s well on its way. Our boys are cold, homesick. They thought they’d be home for Thanksgiving – well, then, Christmas.
They’ll be wanting to know why the whole thing’s starting to bog down. And when they DO finally come, they’ll find the answers, they’ll see to that, all right.