BATH — A Veterans Day observance came early in North Carolina’s oldest town when Bath Elementary School conducted its annual service to honor veterans Friday.

Thomas Wilson, winner of the Bath Ruritan Veterans Day essay contest and an eight-grade student at the school, read his essay, which, in part, tells the story of

“For me, my appreciation for veterans comes from knowing and loving a Beaufort County native who served in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Theater of World War II. He was the son of a sharecropper and lived down a dirt lane just past Beaufort (County) Community College,” Wilson said. “He was 16 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. When he turned 17, old enough to enlist, he quit Washington High School and joined the Navy. He was only four years older than I am. He would spend the next four years and 250,000 nautical miles onboard the U.S. warship, destroyer-escort Foreman, DE-633.”

Wilson noted that the USS Foreman participated in several significant operations in the Pacific Theater. The ship survived a bombing attack, including a 500-pound bomb passing through its deck before exploding 30 feet below the ship’s hull, Wilson noted.

“There was no bravado in his stories, and he would sometimes cry when he recalled certain events. His pet peeve was Hollywood war movies like “Midway,” “Back to Bataan,” “Saving Private Ryan” and others. He felt that movies like this did not accurately represent the real horror and carnage that our troops endured. He taught me to honor and silently respect out military veterans. This is truly what Veterans Day is all about.”

Wilson noted that a photograph of this man, Seaman, Second Class, Fred Jasper Hollis, hangs in the wardroom of the battleship USS North Carolina (BB-55).

“Along with this picture is this answer to a questions about the worst and best thing he had seen in the war. Worst was the bodies of dead and severely wounded Marines he pulled from the ocean at Okinawa. Best was the beautiful sight he saw when the lights of hundreds of ships, staged for the invasion of Japan, were turned on for the first time since Pearl Harbor. The war was over.”

Hollis died in August, Wilson noted.

Don Phipps, superintendent of Beaufort County Schools and the son of an Air Force veteran, read a poem about a veteran’s military experiences. It was written by Andrea C. Brett.

An excerpt from “I Am a Veteran” reads:

“I served on the battle front, I served on the base.
I bound up the wounded and begged for God’s grace,
I gave orders to fire,
I followed commands,
I marched into conflict in far distant lands.
In the jungle, the desert, on mountains and shores,
In bunkers, in tents, on dank earthen floors.
While I fought on the ground, in the air, on the sea,
My family and friends were home praying for me.
For the land of the free and the home of the brave,
I faced my demons in foxholes and caves.
Then one dreaded day, without drummer or fife,
I lost an arm, my buddy lost his life.
“I came home and moved on, but forever was changed.
The perils of war in my memory remain.
I don’t really say much. I don’t feel like I can,
But I left home a child,
And came home a man.”
The school traces its annual Veterans Day service to one of its former principals, Jack Wallace, a veteran of the Korean War. Wallace’s hope was that the annual observance to honor veterans would instill a sense of patriotism into the school’s students over the years.

This year’s observance included a silent 21-gun salute to honor two former BES students killed during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Johnathan Kirk and Joel Taylor.