Memorial Day events
City of Woodstock Memorial Day ceremony
10 a.m. Monday. Free admission. The Park at City Center, 101 Arnold Mill Road, Woodstock.
The city of Woodstock joins forces with the American Legion, Marine Corps League and other local veterans groups to honor those who have fought and those who have fallen in the service. A special service of remembrance includes the East Cobb New Horizons Band and 10 tons of polished granite memorial dedicated to Woodstock veterans. If you know Woodstock veterans who died in combat or from injuries as a result of combat, call 770-517-6788 to have their name added to the memorial. www.woodstockga.gov.
Dacula Memorial Day parade
10 a.m. Monday. Parade begins at Hebron Baptist Church, 202 Hebron Church Road, and proceeds down Dacula Road, turns right on Second Avenue and ends at Dacula High School. 123 Broad St., Dacula.
"Courage, sacrifice and freedom" is the theme of the 2014 Memorial Day parade. Grand marshal Roy Wallis, a World War II veteran who served in the U.S. Army, will lead a tribute parade for the fallen men and women. www.daculamemorialday.com.
Roswell Remembers at Roswell City Hall
10 a.m. Monday. Free admission. Ceremony located at 38 Hill St., Roswell.
Georgia’s largest Memorial Day ceremony includes memorial displays open to the public, pre-ceremony music provided by Atlanta wind symphony and Chattahoochee Celtic pipes and drums. The featured speaker is Jonna Doolittle Hoppes, founder of the Doolittle Foundation, an organization dedicated to making U.S. military history available to students. Veterans share moments of reflection during the ceremony before the 21-gun salute. No pets.
He still remembers Gottfried Paulson, how he lived and how he died.
Especially on Memorial Day.
It happened on an April morning 63 years ago, Jack Robinson recalled. He and his buddy Paulson were crawling down a hill. Chinese soldiers had them in their sights, bullets whizzing everywhere, shredding shrubbery that hid the two scared Marines.
Robinson was in front; Paulson was 20 feet behind. They scrambled toward a tank at the bottom of the hill where others assigned to the 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division had gathered.
Robinson kept his eyes ahead, fixed on the tank.
And Paulson?
Robinson picked up his scrapbook Sunday, a compilation of black-and-white photos detailing his year of duty in the Korean War. He shook his head.
“Paulson made a mistake,” said the 85-year-old Robinson, who lives in Snellville.
Memorial Day honors people like Marine Pfc. Paulson, a tall, dark-haired youngster from Pennsylvania, killed while serving his country.
On Sunday, veterans from different American wars met at the Concourse Athletic Club in Sandy Springs to remember the fallen – the soldiers, sailors, fliers and Marines, nearly 1 million in all since the Civil War. They reminisced with each other, and spoke to visitors about their wartime experiences.
For Robinson, the “Meet Our Veterans” gathering at Sandy Springs — organized by the World War II Roundtable of Atlanta — was a chance to educate another generation about a little-known war. Sandwiched between World War II and Vietnam, the Korean War claimed more than 36,000 American lives.
For retired Marine Maj. Gen. James Livingston, Sunday was a moment to recall the faces of the young warriors who didn’t make it home.
“The 18-, 19-year-old kid who never got a chance to experience life. He gave it all. Never got to be a dad, a grandfather,” said Livingston, a Telfair County native who was awarded the nation’s highest military distinction, the Medal of Honor, for his heroism during a firefight in Vietnam in 1968.
“I hope America remembers.”
Livingston, 74, the keynote speaker at Sunday’s event, was a captain commanding a group of Marines when he was wounded three times “leading from the front.”
His Medal of Honor citation noted that, despite his third wound, “only when assured of the safety of his men did he allow himself to be evacuated.”
At the Sandy Springs event, Livingston said nothing of the medal, which hung from his neck. Instead, he implored Americans to look up from their back yard grills Monday.
“Go to a graveyard and look for a cross that symbolizes someone who gave it all,” he said. Echoing the Gospel of John, he continued: “No man hath more love than to lay down his life for another man.”
Robert Tollman thinks back to a roommate in boot camp early in World War II. They were Marines, ready to whip anything. After basic training, the two went separate ways. His roommate’s path led to Iwo Jima.
Word got to Tollman later that his ex-roommate, a parachutist from Colorado, had been killed at Iwo Jima. “It was so sad,” Tollman, who lives in Dunwoody, recalled Sunday.
His roommate, the old Marine recalled, was just a boy. So was Tollman.
Carl Beck remembered hiding in a hay loft during World War II. A Missouri native who now lives in Atlanta, Beck enlisted in the Army when he was 17. The Army taught him to jump from airplanes. He put that training to use when he jumped behind German lines on D-Day, the great Allied invasion of occupied France.
Beck and another paratrooper avoided capture for days before finding a friendly French family – Free French resistance, as it turned out – who hid them in a hay loft. The two men eventually made it safely to American lines.
“It was my time to survive, I guess,” said Beck, 88. Many of his comrades did not. “I’m not a hero; I’m a survivor.”
Robinson feels the same way about his time in Korea. He got out, got an education, got on with his life, working for a petroleum company. He’s had a full life.
Yet he cannot forget that day, 63 years ago, when Paulson made a mistake.
“He turned around to shoot back,” said Robinson. “He got a bullet between the eyes.
“I still think about Paulson.”
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