CALLICOON, NY — “Every war,” said Harry McFarland, “has to have the first one killed, and the last one killed.” 

He named many of them. Henry Gunther, for example. Sgt. Gunther died on November 11, 1918, one minute before the armistice took effect. 

The names can get lost in the remembering. War is enormous, all-consuming, and the histories long; it can be easy to forget the soldiers, sailors and civilians who died.

On Memorial Day, the Cochecton-based Delaware Lodge of Free & Accepted Masons held a quiet service at the veterans memorial in Callicoon Creek Park. Most of those participating were veterans from the Navy, the Army, the Air Force.  

It was the first of two that day—a second would be held in Narrowsburg.

McFarland, the lodge master and a veteran, concluded with “Just a Common Soldier,” a poem by Lawrence Vaincourt. He reminded the gathering that not all the dead were male; nurses died too, female soldiers in more recent wars. 

He knew one woman who rests at Arlington. “Every time I go there, I stop in and say hey,” he said.

The ceremony concluded as those present placed pennies on the memorial stone. It was a traditional reminder that they had been there. That they would remember.