When World War II veterans were invited to stand Tuesday morning, two men rose to their feet: Art Schaeffer and Harry Sutherland.
The community Veterans Day Celebration wasn’t the first time the two Vancouver men were in the same place during the same event.
An earlier occasion was during the war in the Pacific more than 70 years ago, at the battle for Guadalcanal.
Sutherland, 93, was on the USS Kanawha, which fueled Navy warships during the Pacific campaign … until it was sunk by enemy dive-bombers.
“We were fueling a task force that was doing some shelling, and the Japanese decided they had to stop that,” Sutherland said.
Several other Navy vessels were sunk.
“All of us were assigned to other ships,” Sutherland said.
Schaeffer also was in the Navy, but he saw the naval battles at Guadalcanal from the beach. Schaeffer was a member of a ground crew, assigned to a Marine aviation unit at Henderson Field on the island. The Japanese fought fiercely to retake Guadalcanal and its airfield.
“We would sit on the beach and watch the naval battles,” Schaeffer, 92, said.
The veterans at the Armed Forces Reserve Center on Tuesday represented more than 70 years of service. It will stretch well into the future, said keynote speaker Leslie Burger, a retired major general who spent 33 years in the Army Medical Corps.
“Our world has not grown safer,” the Vancouver veteran said. We won’t see peace in our lifetimes; neither will our children, Burger said.
Responding to those challenges means making sure our military is well trained and well equipped — and then making sure those veterans and their families are well cared for, he said.
Long-term impact
It also means mobilizing enough forces so the same troops don’t have to be deployed time after time after time. With the current pace of repeated deployments, Burger said, “Over the next decade, families will pay.”
Another speaker, state Rep. Monica Stonier, D-Vancouver, recalled joining her son for a run through their neighborhood. She stopped at a corner and told her son, “Look down the street.”
“There were flags on the corner of every driveway,” Stonier said. The flags were a tribute to Capt. Christopher Stover, whose family lived on the street. The Air Force pilot was killed on Jan. 7 in a helicopter crash along the English coast.
Through their service, veterans have protected our way of life for more than 200 years, said U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Camas. While many other countries are trying to follow our model of democracy, “It’s not working everywhere,” she said. “What we have is unique, and it’s worth fighting for.”
Herrera Beutler noted 23 posters along the walls, each with the portrait of a local man who has died in a war zone since 9/11.
“A lot of these young men represent my generation,” said Herrera Beutler, who just turned 36.
The event was presented by the Community Military Appreciation Committee, a nonprofit organization.
