WWII vet looks back over 75 years at Veterans Day ceremony

LACONIA — Seventy-five years ago, Joe Picard landed at Normandy and proceeded to fight his way across Europe as part of a U.S. Army heavy artillery unit.

Standing in the cold at a Veterans Day ceremony in Laconia on Monday, Picard said it certainly doesn’t seem that long ago, and he doesn’t feel 94 years old.

“But I am, and no denying it,” said Picard, who is from Rhode Island originally and retired to Laconia after a career in banking.

Picard’s unit landed after D-Day and was part of the invasion force that defeated Germany.

It was in southern Germany that one of his best friends, Raymond Bolduc, of Laconia, was killed by shrapnel from an oncoming artillery shell. His friend from basic training was unrelated to retired Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, who spoke at the ceremony in Veterans Park.

Picard said the passage of time doesn’t stop the feelings that arise from his military service and those with whom he served.

“Well you think of them all the time,” Picard said. “You know, the thoughts come back as you speak to people and as you go around and meet other veterans.”

He looks back at his military service with pride, but there is sadness too.

“You’re sad for those that you lost,” he said. “The other thing that is sad is that, as you get older, there’s very few of these people left. For example, in my unit, as far as I know, there are only six of us left.”

Hillary Seeger, VFW chaplain, called for public support for her group and others like it as veterans age out from participation in these organizations.

“Support your American Legion. Support your VFW,” Seeger said. “We try and give back to the community as a whole by allowing our facilities to be used for things like high school sports banquets, but with a dwindling membership and a lack of participation, we’re all in danger of being extinct.”

During his speech, retired Brig. Gen. Bolduc, who grew up in Laconia, pointed to a memorial monument in the park.

“When I look at the names on these memorial walls they are just so familiar, truly, they are all Laconia names — Warren, Lemay, Lessard, DuPont, Dow,” he said.

“I love the fact that we care enough to gather once a year to recognize our veterans.”

Bolduc said he has traveled the world in his long military service.

“I have met presidents of countries, chiefs of defense, all the way down to private. I’ve had dinner with them. I went out to the field with them. I went to war with them. We have shared the glories of the battlefield, the sadness of the battlefield, like many of you here.”

Invariably, the people he meets quote from Gen. John Stark’s famous 1809 letter to a group of veterans commemorating the Battle of Bennington:

“Live free or die,” Bolduc said. “And to finish the sentence, ‘because there are worse things than death.’

“And what the people here on these walls stand for, the ones with stars next to their names, who paid the ultimate sacrifice, they believed that.”