PORT ANGELES — Volunteer to help a veteran. Promote military service to youth. Ask a veteran about their service.
Or simply say thank you.
These are some of the ways to honor service members past and present, Coast Guard Cmdr. Brian Edmiston said at the annual Veterans Day ceremony at the Port Angeles Coast Guard base.
“We have many, many examples of courage, service and sacrifice to reflect on today,” said Edmiston, executive officer of Air Station/Sector Field Office Port Angeles.
“Let’s use this opportunity to celebrate service to our nation, to demonstrate the appreciation we have for our military and to inspire future generations to dedicate themselves in the name of the many that have come before them.”
Nearly 1,000 attendees packed the hangar on Ediz Hook for a patriotic Wednesday ceremony sponsored by the Clallam County Veterans Association.
The Coast Guard station has been designated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as a regional Veterans Day observance site for the past 19 years.
“Veterans are the unsung heroes of our nation,” Edmiston said.
“In peacetime especially, it’s easy to forget that these men and women were on duty in lonely outposts around the world,” Edmiston said.
“Our veterans miss birthdays of their children, wedding anniversaries and graduations,” Edmiston added.
“They’ve spent holidays in soggy rice field paddies in Vietnam, amid the sinking sands of the Iraqi desert and the cold and rugged mountains of Eastern Europe.”
With a giant American flag draped behind the stage, patriotic songs were sung by the Sequim High School Select Choir, Olympic Peninsula Men’s Chorus and the Grand Olympics Chorus of Sweet Adelines International.
The three singing groups teamed up for a stirring rendition of “God Bless America” near the end of the ceremony.
The Port Angeles High School Band played an armed forces medley in which members of each military branch stood up to be recognized while their branch’s theme song was being played.
Flag ceremonies were handled by American Legion Riders Post 29, Port Angeles.
A rifle salute was made by the Marine Corps League Honor Guard, Mount Olympus Detachment 897, and bagpiper Thomas McCurdy performed “Amazing Grace.”
Tom Beard of Port Angeles, who retired as a Coast Guard lieutenant commander and rescue pilot in the same hanger 40 years ago, shared the story of Coast Guard Capt. Donald “Cap’m Mac” MacDiarmid, for whom a building on the Port Angeles base is named.
Beard, a maritime and aviation historian who wrote The Coast Guard along with six other books and more than 50 articles, was the guest speaker for this year’s Veterans Day ceremony.
Cap’m Mac, also known as Mac Dee, was a colorful and charismatic, cigar-smoking aviator who was stationed in Port Angeles six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Beard said.
MacDiarmid believed the station was not prepared for an enemy attack.
He demonstrated his unit’s lack of war readiness by staging a mock sneak attack on the Coast Guard base in a plane he had parked the previous day at what is now William R. Fairchild Memorial Airport.
“Soon the airplane was screaming in at a low altitude above the base in a pre-dawn mock attack,” Beard told the audience.
Cap’m Mac’s friends on the ground threw sticks of dynamite onto the water, fired a machine gun at a smoke float that MacDiarmid had dropped from the air and set oil puddles ablaze to create a realistic war scene.
“Men came tumbling out of the building through doors and windows carrying with them empty rifles,” Beard said.
One sailor who kept one bullet in his pocket accidently fired his rifle as he fell into an air raid ditch, Beard said.
A Navy ship in Port Angeles Harbor began shooting machine guns at the plane being flown by MacDiarmid, who abandoned the mock attack and retreated to Canada.
During the mock raid, a junior officer told Coast Guard headquarters in Seattle that the base was under attack.
“An immediate warning of Japanese invasion was spread down the entire West Coast of the United States, putting all military units on invasion alert,” Beard said.
“Mac Dee was partly correct in his assessment of his unit’s unpreparedness. However, Mac Dee succeeded where the Japanese failed by attacking the United States continent.”
The Port Angeles Coast Guard base became the first permanent air station on the Pacific Coast when it was commissioned in 1935.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
