CLAREMORE, Okla. – On this day set aside to honor America’s veterans, the streets of Claremore were packed with people who came to cheer them on.

As the bands played and the children waved American flags, the annual Claremore Veteran’s Day parade drew thousands of people from across Green Country.

They come together as families and alone to honor veterans.

Paul Perryman, member of America’s Greatest Generation, was named Grand Marshal of the Claremore parade.

“I was a T-5. Almost a corporal,” World War II veteran Paul Perryman said with a chuckle.

Perryman, now 101 years old, is one of the few surviving soldiers from World War II. He told 2 News Oklahoma’s Karen Larsen that his brother enlisted a year earlier and was a paratrooper. Perryman served on the front lines in Germany.

“They were on the run and we were right behind them. And I was there for 39 days,” Perryman said. “It cost a lot of lives.”

It doesn’t matter which war, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War and Afghanistan; or how many decades have passed, these veterans all share a powerful bond.

“Anything they see they have to do, they do,” said Ken Rinehart, a U.S. Army veteran who served in the Korean War.

He and his fellow veterans also share heartbreaking memories of the battlefield.

“There are no words that can say what it is,” Rinehart said.

Johnny Messimore was a sergeant in the US Army during the Vietnam War and remembers: “When I came home in 1971, they called me a baby killer. Now they want to call me a hero. I don’t think I deserved either one.”

They put aside ghostly memories on a beautiful November day to mark their sacrifice, in a state where the flag flies high. Here, Americans celebrate the courage, bravery and dedication of those who gave their all.

“It is a brotherhood and a kinship that we all share and it will remain that way forever,” Messimore added.

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