Remembering

A Veteran Marine and his dog performing tricks for treats at the Veteran's Parade on Clematis Street.

VETERANS PAST & PRESENT

VETERANS DAY

On Sunday, I walked out of our condo building's door to pick something up, and I walked straight into the Veteran's Day Parade. There is always something happening on Clematis Street, but this was a happy surprise. I saw marching bands, veteran groups, dance teams and smiling politicians.

PAST

For the last two years, I've been researching and writing my first historical book on WWII. I've been reconstructing the life of my Great-Uncle, Corporal Peter Snoich, who was killed in Germany in November of 1944. This summer, I was handed the gift of his Recon Company's morning action reports. So now I know exactly where Pete & his band of soldiers were every day during their European campaign.

LOCAL

Much to my surprise, I found out that West Palm Beach had a massive role during WWII that was kept under Top Secret wraps during those days. I uncovered these facts first at Woodlawn Cemetery, when I discovered a grave of a soldier who was killed in a plane crash at what is now called Palm Beach International Airport.

Then I ventured into the physical WWII archives at Palm Beach County's Historical Society. It was there that I unwound the story that West Palm Beach, as a brand new airport, had the most immediate flight capacity for our military to commandeer it. Miami and Tampa were already pretty packed with commercial flights.

So, with the local civilians in the Civil Air Patrol volunteering to keep a lookout for German spies and attacks from the sea, the Army Air Force jacked up a frenetic 24/7 flight log of their rookie fly boys to Europe and even around the world!

10,000 Planes!

There weren't enough experienced pilots and the planes couldn't fly as far as today. So they cooked up this ingenious Ferrying Scheme. One experienced pilot would "Ferry" or lead a small pack of the inexperienced fighter pilots. First, they would train them at our airfield, which was then called Morrison Field, named after Florida's female pioneer in aviation. But that is a different story.

The flight path was fairly safe, in that each group of planes would fly by sight and island hop down the Caribbean Sea, then along the Coast of South America to Natal, the most Eastern point of Brazil. There, they would be handed off again and be ferried across the Atlantic Ocean to the Coast of Africa. Then, if they were fighting in Europe, they would fly North along the coast of Africa and right into battle! Some continued across Africa, through Cairo, to Burma, and into the Asian Theater of Operations to fight Japan.

I'm starting to find more of these flight logs and lost planes when researching on the Archives.Gov. So, needless to say, there was a LOT more going on down here than was understood in the past or presently. The World at War was a true statement.

PRESENT

So we have many, past and present, willing to sacrifice themselves to Watch Over Us. In conducting all this research on those who left their lives on the field in the past for us, I wondered what I could do On My Watch beyond writing their remembrances.

In this quest, I found a disturbing statistical trend. When Veterans return to us from modern-day war fronts, they often struggle for obvious reasons to assimilate back into our daily life. In fact, when I looked at the provided statistics on our county's homeless population, approximately 1/3 of our homeless are VETERANS, according to the local Salvation Army.

The 300

Our County's stats say that in 2025 our homeless population has shrunk to about 1,500 people. 600 have shelter through various agencies. 900 do not. Therefore, there could be 300 of our Veterans sleeping on our streets tonight for a lack of 300 beds and shelter.

Our government is very good at recruiting them, training them up, sending them out, boxing them up, meticulously documenting everything, but they get a big fat F for those who return and are suffering from the invisible wounds of war.

This is not acceptable. So, I am organizing a social welfare fundraising effort to address this lack of shelter for our county's veterans. It is called ON MY WATCH!

This will be a great endeavor for Wall Street South to get involved as business partners.

300 Beds. A doable, tangible goal.

Onward We Go!

Whoever smiles longer,

lives longer!

Erica Swenson Elliott