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Veterans Day Honors All Who Have Served

John Conway - Sullivan County Historian
Posted 11/8/19

At approximately 1500 hours on June 16, 1944, some ten days after the D-Day invasion, the U.S. Army's 96th Evacuation Hospital disembarked from their Landing Craft Tanks and gathered behind the sand …

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Veterans Day Honors All Who Have Served

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At approximately 1500 hours on June 16, 1944, some ten days after the D-Day invasion, the U.S. Army's 96th Evacuation Hospital disembarked from their Landing Craft Tanks and gathered behind the sand dunes on Utah Beach in France. Among the members of that unit was a young soldier from Monticello, Private First Class John Conway.

From Utah Beach, the unit traveled by truck to the fields west of Ste-Mère-Eglise, and established itself as a functioning hospital. During its time at Ste-Mère-Eglise, the hospital received 4,000 patients and executed 2,700 surgical operations, while hosting visits by Lt. General Omar N. Bradley and Lt. General George S. Patton. By late in November, the 96th was in Germany, the first U.S. Army Evacuation Hospital to enter the country, and the month of December was spent treating casualties from the Battle of the Bulge.

During the first week of fighting the 96th Evacuation Hospital, the first to set up in the Bulge, was within 8 miles of the front line, and utilized whatever space they could find to treat and house the wounded, including riding halls and cavalry barns, and even had to set up operating facilities in empty horse stables. Over the next several months, the unit would be on the move throughout Germany, establishing and then breaking down hospitals in places such as Eschweiler, Dünstekoven, and Halle.

According to the regimental history, “orders were received on 27 December for the unit to move back to Belgium. The 96th Evac Hosp left their barracks near Brand, Germany destined for Velm, Belgium (northwest of Brussels, Belgium -ed). The end of 1944 was spent mainly trying to make personnel comfortable in the cold cramped conditions of a Belgian Convent School. By mid-January 1945, the Hospital received orders to relocate to Spa, also in Belgium, where it was intended to help treat further battle casualties from the Bulge fighting.”

By December of 1945, the war having ended in Europe and in the Pacific, the 96th was back at Camp Patrick Henry in Virginia for demobilization, having treated more than 47,000 patients in a hectic and harried 18 months. The young PFC from Monticello returned home shortly thereafter, and although a proud Veteran who never missed commemorating Veterans' Day, he almost never spoke of his experiences in Europe.

Of course, there were many men and women from Sullivan County who served their country during World War II, and a good number of them did not return, losing their lives in Europe, in Okinawa, Luzon and Mindanao. The same can be said for each of the conflicts before and since. Patriotism has always run high in Sullivan County, and whenever Uncle Sam has issued a call for troops, the county has provided more than its quota.

During the Revolutionary War, long before the county was officially formed, men from Cushetunk, the first permanent European settlement in the upper Delaware River Valley, fought on both sides at the Battle of Minisink, one of the bloodiest of the entire war. The young county was represented in the War of 1812 and in the Mexican War, and during the Civil War provided men for a number of regiments, including 10 of the 15 companies of the 56th Regiment and nearly all of the 143rd.

Even considering this history, the county's response to the call for troops during the First World War was particularly overwhelming, and when the United States entered the raging war in Europe in 1917, the county Exemption Board, as it was known at the time, issued a call for more than 500 men in order to ensure that the county's initial quota of 261 could be met.

“The first 522 men will be called to Monticello within the next few days to be examined by the Sullivan County Exemption Board for the new National Army," the Liberty Register reported in its July 27th edition. "Only half that number will be finally chosen for the first increment of the new forces, 261 men being the official quota for this county as announced by Governor Whitman on Tuesday, but double the quota will be summoned so as to ensure the desired number of men physically able and unexempt.”

In December, 1917, another 21 Sullivan County men were called to report to Camp Dix, and 33 more left the following April. Some of these men never made it back, their young lives claimed at Fismes, and Argonne and in other horrific battles.

These men and women, these Veterans, those who served and returned home as well as those wounded in battle and those who gave their last full measure of devotion, all deserve mention as one of this country's most solemn holidays approaches.

Veterans' Day as it is currently celebrated became a national holiday in 1954, but its roots date back considerably before that. In 1926, Congress passed a resolution recognizing November 11th as Armistice Day, commemorating the signing of the cease fire with Germany at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. Armistice Day became a national holiday twelve years later.

It was renamed Veterans' Day in 1954 in order to recognize the sacrifice of the soldiers in all U.S. wars. There have been attempts over the years to change the date of the observance, but tradition has been strong and the holiday has always been returned to its original date. And throughout, the sentiment of honoring all of those who fought to preserve freedom has remained constant.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. He can be reached by e-mail at jconway52@hotmail.com. The “young soldier from Monticello, Pfc. John Conway” was his father.

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