At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month – exactly 100 years after the guns stopped firing in Europe, marking the end of World War I – about 50 Lawrence Township residents gathered to re-dedicate the monument to Mercer County’s war dead.
The monument, which was erected by the Mercer County Board of Chosen Freeholders in 1920, is located in front of the Lawrence Township Municipal Building.
Among the 205 names on the brass plaque of Mercer County residents who died in World War I are those of three Lawrence Township men – Austin P. Carter, Charles Crozer Conard and Jasper Hughes Allen Jr.
Municipal Manager Kevin Nerwinski told the attendees at the Veterans Day ceremony that the monument was originally located at the corner of Brunswick Pike/Route 1 and Franklin Corner Road. It was moved to the front of Public School No. 4 – now the location of the Route 1 Plaza strip shopping center – in 1934, after it was struck and damaged by a car.
The monument was moved to its current location in front of the Municipal Building in 1970, after the school building was sold, Nerwinski said.
Over the years, the monument had been neglected – until Township Councilman Jim Kownacki suggested restoring it, Nerwinski said.
The landscaping around the monument was cleaned up, as was the brass plaque, Nerwinski said. The soldiers’ sacrifices are being celebrated and remembered “with all the dignity and grandeur they deserve,” he said.
Wrapping up his remarks, Nerwinski said that a veteran is “someone who, at one point in his or her life, wrote a blank check made payable to the United States of America for an amount up to and including their life.”
“That is an honor and there are way too many people today who no longer understand that. But on this day, for all of us here, we show that we do understand,” Nerwinski said.
Commander Andrew Tunnard (U.S. Navy, Retired), the master of ceremonies, also pointed to the 205 names on the plaque. Four nurses are included among the World War I dead from Mercer County.
In his remarks, Tunnard said the end of World War I was not just the end of an armed conflict, but an end to an old world order and the beginning of a new world order. The war was a global conflict that had spread to Africa, Asia, the Middle East and North America.
The United States’ entry into the war in 1917 changed the dynamics of the war, ending a three-year stalemate involving numerous countries, Tunnard said.
There was no desire by the United States to enter the war, but it was drawn into the conflict after a passenger ship, the RMS Lusitania, was attacked.
More unarmed merchant ships were attacked, and it became a matter of self-defense, Tunnard said.
“Thus began the start of the modern U.S. veteran, which we celebrate today – the concept of the citizen soldiers stepping up to defend our country in times of peril, but now on a global scale,” Tunnard said.
“We became the leaders of a new world, and still are today. The United States would forever more deploy its most precious treasure – citizen-soldiers, airmen, Marines, sailors, Coast Guardsmen and Merchant Marines – to defend our country’s interests and protect our fellow countrymen,” he said.
The United States is still sending servicemen and servicewomen abroad, Tunnard said, reeling off a list that includes Afghanistan, Syria, Africa, Southeast Asia and the country’s own southern border with Mexico.
Tunnard also read poet John McRae’s well known World War I poem, “In Flanders Fields.” The poem, from dead soldiers, calls on the living to take the torch from them. “IF ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders fields,” McRae wrote.
“Let us not break faith with ‘us who die’ – us who sacrifice,” Tunnard said. “We all need to be vigilant and outspoken to ensure that we are not allowing our freedoms – or the veterans who defend them – to be diluted and dishonored. There has been too much sacrifice to allow that to happen.”
Tunnard also acknowledged the winners of the Veterans Day essay contest – first-place winner Charlotte Miller, who read her essay; second-place winner Elizabeth Achtau; and third-place winner R. J. Harrison.
Then, Tunnard and Col. Robert Watson (U.S. Army, Retired), who is the commander of the 112th Field Artillery Association, and Sam Alphin, the commander of the Mercer County American Legion, placed a wreath in front of the World War I monument.
Finally, a vintage World War I cannon was fired by the 112th Field Artillery Association cannon crew in an artillery salute. The cannon belongs to the 112th Field Artillery Association, which is based at the New Jersey Army National Guard Armory on Eggerts Crossing Road.