NEWS

Ceremony pays tribute to veterans

Ed Offley | Special to the News Herald

PANAMA CITY BEACH – The heart of the ceremony was a long silence.

One hundred years to the minute after the guns fell quiet in Europe on November 11, 1918, a large gathering of Canadian Air Force personnel, American veterans and family members stood in silence yesterday to remember those who had given their lives for freedom during the First World War.

As the haunting bugle notes of the “Last Post” faded away, the audience of remained standing. A hush fell over the spacious meeting room at VFW Post 10555 as the audience stood vigil before a simple shrine flanked by the Canadian maple leaf flag and the American stars and stripes. For two minutes, no one stirred as they pondered the end of a global conflict a century past that had cost the lives of 116,708 American servicemen, 64,996 of their Canadian brethren, and another 9 million combatants and civilians.

The Remembrance Day event carried out by the men and women of the Canadian Detachment—Tyndall is normally held at the Air Force base each Veterans Day in parallel with the various other community events scheduled on November 11.

But as acting Detachment Commander Major Blaise Boutilier explained, the aftermath of Hurricane Michael prompted his unit to bring the ceremony out into the larger Bay County community.

“This has super more meaning because of that” necessity, Boutilier said. “This is especially more important when life is not normal.”

Numbering about thirty officers and enlisted personnel assigned to the bi-national North American Aerospace Command’s (NORAD) First Air Force headquarters at Tyndall, the Canadians have worked side-by-side with their American counterparts before, during and after the devastation of Hurricane Michael. And their family  members were an integral part of the quiet, but somber ceremony marking the centennial of the World War I armistice.

They included Dylan McDonald, 13, the son of Canadian Captain Charles MacDonald, who recited the immortal words of “In Flanders Fields,” written by Canadian army physician Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae after the funeral of a close friend killed in the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915:

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders Fields.

And Dylan King, the twelve-year-old son of Major Patrick King, strode to the front of the room to recite a sonnet beloved of all airmen that was written by John Gillespie Magee in 1939, while serving as an American volunteer pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in England during the early years of World War II:

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings …

And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

The ceremony concluded with the presentation of three wreaths. The first one was on behalf of the Canadian Detachment—Tyndall; the second on behalf of the Continental United States NORAD Region and First Air Force, and the third on behalf of Canadian and American servicemen and women currently serving worldwide.

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