County honors veterans with program

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the War to End All Wars officially ended with an armistice between the Allies and the Central Powers. Unfortunately, World War I didn’t come close to living up to that title, sending millions more soldiers into the fray and into the service of their country over the next century.

Sunday marked the 100th anniversary of the armistice of WWI and a few dozen members of the Washington County community came out to mark this day of remembrance on the courthouse lawn.

“Today, we are here to celebrate Veterans Day,” said Retired Army Sergeant Major James “Curt” Hughes. “… Today, I’m speaking to you on the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, the end of World War I, or now, Veterans Day, and that’s a special honor to me.”

Hughes was born and raised in Anderson and moved to Salem in March 1998. He joined the Marines in September 1965, where he served until September 1968 after serving one tour in Vietnam. He then joined the Indiana National Guard in March 1974 as a traditional soldier and then, in June 1977, he joined the active duty Indiana National Guard and retired in 1998. During his time with the military, he took various educational opportunities and received many awards, including military service medals, an Army commendation medal, US Marine Corp good conduct medal, six Army good conduct medals, a Marine Corp combat action ribbon, Marine Corp Presidential Unit Citation, National Defense Medal with one star, humanitarian service medal, Army service ribbon, Indiana recruiting and retention ribbons, Indiana long service medal and many more.

“I know you’ve all heard the saying, ‘All gave some; some gave all,’” he said. “‘Some gave all’ died on our battlefield, defending freedom all over the world. We pay a special tribute to them on Memorial Day. Today, we’re here to pay tribute to ‘All gave some.’ All veterans who served and made many sacrifices for our country along with their dependents.”

Hughes said there are around 16,000,962 living war veterans among the total of 23,000,243 living veterans in the United States. He said 9.2 million veterans are older than 65 and 1.8 million are under 35. Women make up 1.8 million veterans.

“That number is constantly growing,” Hughes said. “We have a lot more women joining the military now. Some of them are even leading combat platoons or companies.”

Hughes continued, saying 7.8 million veterans served during Vietnam, 33 percent of all living veterans. Around 5.2 million veterans served during the Gulf War, 2.5 million served in WWII, 2.8 million veterans served during the Korean War and 6 million served during peace time, what Hughes said was the Cold War.

See the full story in Tuesday's edition of The Salem Leader, on newsstands this evening.