Indian Head, MD – There are no words that can ever truly express the gratitude of a nation for the many sacrifices the men and women of America’s armed forces have made defending its freedom. At the Town of Indian Head’s annual Veterans Day Ceremony Tuesday, Nov. 11 at the Village Green Pavilion, veterans, active duty U.S. Marines and the community expressed their thanks and their stories spoke for them.

“Today you will see and understand as we honor our veterans past, present and future and how safe we are as a nation is because we have men and women who gave their lives for our freedom,” said Louis L. Knight, Senior Master Sergeant, U.S. Air Force, Retired.

The Town of Indian Head honored Mable Painter whose son died in Vietnam. The Mothers of Service Personnel program was instituted during World War II, where if a son or daughter was on active duty, a Blue Star flag was flown in their window. If their child died while in service, the mother then became a Gold Star Mother. Painter, the last living Gold Star Mother in the Town of Indian Head, was presented with a bouquet of flowers and thanked by town.

Perhaps the most telling testimony came from Horace Johnson, who remembered his brother, Walter Melvin “Johnny” Johnson, who was lost at sea aboard the U.S.S. Plymouth Aug. 5, 1943 when the ship was attacked by a German U-boat on the Atlantic coast.

“Johnny was born in 1924,” his brother recalled. “He was the oldest. He left school at the age of 17 to join the U.S. Navy.”

Because he was underage, his brother had to get approval from both parents and the letter had to be notorized, which it was, he said, by his aunt, Irene Swann.

“When he was growing up, Johnny worked as a part-time driver and as a clerk to Judge Jimmy Mitchell,” Johnson said. “He was also ticket taker at the old La Plata movie theater, which today is Port Tobacco Playhouse. I can still hear him walking home, tossing stones and whistling.

“Jimmy played the violin,” he added. “He would play alongside the radio. There was no TV in those days.”

Johnson remembered Orson Welles’ 1939 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds,

“I was seven years old,” he said. “My sister and I were home alone in our house scared to death, when Johnny came home screaming ‘the world is coming to an end! You better get down on your knees and pray!’ At that precise moment, Grandmother Trotter came in and sat us on the sofa and said, ‘now, now, children, only the Good Lord knows when the world will end.’

“Then one day Johnny came rushing in the front door and said, ‘the Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor, we’re at war,’ ” Johnson said. “About two months later Johnny enlisted in the U.S. Navy and went to Norfolk, Va. For training.”

Johnson recalled their mother went to the White House and met with Franklin D. Roosevelt. “She asked him to give her a job and he did,” he recalled.

His mother worked as telephone operator in Indian Head and was on the midnight shift when she got a call from the Navy Department. “She held out hope for a long time hoping he would be found, but he never was,” Johnson said.

Col. Stephen E. Redifer of the U.S. Marine Corps Chemical Biological Incident Response Force, said that military veterans are “made up of ordinary people who respond in extraordinary ways in extraordinary times.”

Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com