Each year the Veterans Administration’s Veterans Day National Committee chooses a commemorative poster, selected from artwork submitted by artists nationwide. It is distributed to VA facilities and military installations around the world, across cities and towns in our nation. It also serves as the cover for the official program of the Veterans Day Observance at Arlington National Cemetery.
This year’s official Veterans Day poster was submitted by Teresa Harrington, a Voluntary Service Activity Assistant at Bedford VA, to honor all Veterans, especially her late father, WWII Combat Veteran James M. Battcock.
Thanks to an invitation from the Secretary of the Veterans Administration, Teresa Harrington will attend Monday’s Veterans Day ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery where the program cover features her design.
The theme for the 2019 Veterans Day Poster is “Service”. For Teresa Harrington, nothing speaks more of service than the wartime journal of her father.
“Every Veteran has a story of service and sacrifice,” said Teresa. “I’m lucky that my father recorded some of his story.” Her father served in the Army and reenlisted in the Navy during WWII. He left his wife and two children to head off to war, uncertain if he would ever see them again.
Pictured in this year’s Veterans Day poster is the journal he secretly kept in 1944-45 while serving aboard “Mighty Monty”, the USS Montpelier.
Click each of the images below to see it at full size
Titled “Dates and Facts to Remember,” Battcock’s cloth-bound diary begins with the journey to Pearl Harbor on October 25, 1944. By November 25, the Montpelier had joined a task group off Leyte Gulf and resisted numerous attacks, sustaining damage in kamikaze attacks.
Some Excerpts from James M. Battcock’s Journal
“November 27 -At 11:40 am had a strong air attack By The Japs. Four suicide planes dove at our ship. Shot three down, one explode 25 yards from port beam. Debris hit ship. And a few men were injured on MT 41.0 and 5MT 410 men were injured.” …
“December 25 – Worked like hell bringing supplies aboard, ‘what a Christmas’.” Air and torpedo attacks were heavy through the winter.
“Feb 17 -Went to the beach at Grand IS for recreation, four men from my division out of six of us did not return to ship being injured seriously by a booby trap. One man died before they could get him to a doctor.”
Through June and July, the men dodged torpedoes, mines, and air attacks. They survived through illness and typhoons.
“June 15 – fired upon by B-24 whom was not showing friendly indications.”
In August, Battcock writes, “still at Okinawa…Suicide Planes in area.”
From the third of August to the eleventh “air attacks…sitting under smoke screen every evening…no movies.”
Finally, Battcock writes of rumors of peace:
“August 19th -No air attacks, looks like the Japs have given up.” (They had surrendered August 14th).
“August 20 – Made a liberty on Okinawa…had three small Bottles of Beer. Got a Head Ake…
August 22 My wife Birthday. Thinking of home and the kids…”
Sharing a Legacy of Service with his Family
James Battcock thought so much of his family that he had penned a letter to his five-year-old son prior to one of his deployments, “just in case.”
“My dear son: as I sit here wondering about you and your mother and little baby sister…I want you to know that if anything happens to me that you will be the man of the house. …There will probably be a question as to why I enlisted in the navy. I enlisted because to my way of thinking when my country is in danger I think it is my duty to help her all I can, and I want you to be proud of me, as I was of my father. I want you to know that wherever I go I will try my best and if it is God’s will that I should be taken from my little family, then I will die happy fighting for my country, as I would want my son to do if ever our country is in danger.”
That 5-year-old son grew up and joined the Navy, and his two brothers joined the Army, where one served as a Combat Veteran in Vietnam. The dog tags in the Veterans Day poster belonged to one of them.
As James Battcock’s discharge paper in the poster attests, he did make it home safely and eventually had four more children.
Sharing James Battcock’s Legacy with the Nation
It is the baby of the family, Teresa, who honors her father, James. M. Babcock, with the 2019 Veterans Day poster design.
“If my father ever knew his humble journal of service would be featured like this, he would be brimming with pride to be recognized by the country he loved and served,” Harrington smiled.
“He always told me that someday someone would find it and do something with it.”
Teresa’s father’s journal and discharge paper, simply pictured with her brother’s dog tags, are watched over by the strong, proud Veterans Affairs eagle.
The VA has been an integral part of Teresa’s family ever since she can remember. Her parents used to say they didn’t know what they would have done without it. VA was part of the regular landscape of her childhood as she spent hours visiting her father the numerous times he was inpatient from the time she was a toddler until he passed in 1998.
In 2002 Teresa came to work at VA as a nursing assistant. She currently works as an Activity Assistant in Voluntary Service. She brings her deep personal understanding of the importance of quality time for Veterans and their families beyond their medical care.
She is extremely grateful to the Veterans Day National Committee for selecting her poster, as she states, “Sharing my father’s journal with the world is the greatest honor I can give to him.”
James Battcock’s journal can be read in its entirety by clicking www.bedford.va.gov/giving/Battcock_Journal_WWII_3.pdf
Submitted by Laurel Holland, Chief, Voluntary Service at the
Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital (Bedford VA), Massachusetts.
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