By Bill Simons

Cheering the 2024 San Diego Veterans Day parade, my son Joe, grandson Isaac and I observed the large Latinx contingent. Despite perennial attacks on their loyalty, immigrants and minority groups have a long history of demonstrating their patriotism in blood. They are amongst the most fervent believers in the American Dream.

Of African and Indigenous descent, Crispus Attucks, formerly a slave, was the first American killed in the runup to the Revolutionary War. During the Civil War, Blacks constituted 10 percent of the Union military. Future General Benjamin O. Davis Jr. and the Tuskegee Airmen contributed to the Double Victory Campaign, fighting for victory against Hitler and victory over American racism. General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, quarterbacked Operation Desert Storm. 

From the Civil War through conflicts in the Persian Gulf, the 69th New York Infantry Regiment, Irish Americans conspicuous in their ranks, has demonstrated bravery under fire. The 69th gave new meaning to the term “Fighting Irish.” 

Despite President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 confining more than 120,000 Japanese Americans to internment campus without due process, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, comprised of second-generation Japanese Americans, was – given size and term of service – the United States’ most decorated World War II army unit. 

Navajo Code Talkers crafted an impenetrable form of communication that protected U.S. Marine operations during World War II. And Ira Hayes, a member of the Akimel O’odham, was one of the six Marines who raised the American flag at the Battle of Iowa Jima atop Mount Suribachi. America’s diverse racial and ethnic groups figure prominently in the nation’s roster of wartime heroes, Jews amongst them. 

Jews have contributed their service and lives to America’s conflicts from the Revolutionary War to the Gulf. More than 20 Jews have earned the Medal of Honor. Fighting for U.S. independence on the South Carolina frontier, Francis Salvador, age 29, became, on August 1, 1776, the first Jewish combat death in American military history. 

Although Uriah Levy’s active naval service was intermittent, it spanned from the War of 1812 to the Civil War, and he attained the rank of commodore. Despite their then small numbers in the general population, an estimated 10,000 Jews saw military service during the Civil War, the great majority under the Union banner, three of them brevet brigadier generals and one a brevet major general. 

World War I rifleman – and subsequently sergeant – Bill Shemin braved heavy fire, suffering serious wounds, to rescue wounded comrades during August 1918. Posthumously, Shemin received the Medal of Honor for his heroics. During World War I, Joseph Simonovich, like many other Russian Jewish immigrants, volunteered for military duty before he was eligible for citizenship – or changed his name to Simons. Joseph’s eldest son, Shep, my father, enlisted in the World War II Army Air Corps. Middle son Shel went to Korea. And youngest son Alan was an MP in Cold War Berlin. 

Upwards of 550,000 Jews joined the U.S. armed forces during World War II, enduring more than 38,000 casualties. Embracing a humanity transcending religious differences, Rabbi Alexander Goode was one of the four heroic interfaith naval chaplains aboard the USAT Dorchester to perish beneath the North Atlantic on February 3, 1943, while attempting to save the lives of American sailors. Major General Maurice Rose, commander of the Third Armored Division, known for aggressive tactics, succumbed to 14 rounds of German fire on March 30, 1945. 

In 1906, Hyman Rickover, age 6, followed his Polish Russian family to America in search of a better life. Ultimately a four-star admiral with a record 63 years of active service, his was perhaps the most storied career in American naval history. Rickover’s greatest achievement was as “Father of the Nuclear Navy.”

The quarter-century military career of Green Beret Sergeant Major Lawrence “Gus” Freedman began in Vietnam, where he received two Bronze Stars. In 1992, a landmine took his life during the Somalia intervention.

Commissioned a four-star admiral in 2021, Rachel Levine challenged barriers as an admiral, transgender M.D. and head of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. 

Assuming command of the legendary New York Army National Guard’s “Fighting 69th” battalion in 2021, a historically Irish Catholic bastion, Lieutenant Colonel Shawn Tabankin, recipient of two Bronze Star medals during the Iraq campaign, became the protector of the unit’s iconic Kilmer crucifix, an ironic, yet proud, task for a Jewish officer.

Immigration and Judaism shaped the trajectory of Army colonels and identical twin brothers Eugene and Alexander Vindman. Born in 1975, their mother died when the twins were 3 years old. Their father Simon, fired as a civil engineer for denouncing the Communist Party, saw no future for his family in the repressive, authoritarian, antisemitic Ukraine of that era, then part of the Soviet Union. With the twins, older son Len and the boys’ maternal grandmother, Simon fled Kiev for Italy before coming to their American home in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, in 1979. At age 10, Alexander and Eugene gained minor celebrity for their brief appearance in filmmaker Ken Burns’ 1985 documentary “The Statue of Liberty,” a paean to America as a land of liberty for immigrants yearning to breathe free. 

Initially, times were tough for the Vindman family. Arriving with only $759 and hauling furniture for $20 a day, Simon studied at night, took exams and reclaimed his place a civil engineer in New York City. 

To express their gratitude to America, the twins – and brother Len – volunteered for military service. An infantry commander in Iraq, Alexander suffered wounds inflicted by an explosive device during a 2004 reconnaissance mission. In 2019, Alexander, on military assignment to the National Security Council, gave eloquent testimony despite threats during the House of Representatives impeachment investigation against President Donald Trump. Alexander recounted a phone call during which Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate rival Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, by threatening loss of military aid. 

Also on military assignment to the NSC, Eugene supported his brother speaking truth to power. After losing their positions in retaliation, the Vindmans never expressed regret, regarding their whistleblowing as patriotic. Despite Trump’s 2024 triumph, Eugene Vindman, a proponent of refugee asylum as emblematic of the American Creed, won election to the House of Representatives.

Don’t wait until next November 11 to thank a veteran for his/her service.