My parents with Jack and Francis Rapaport (left), Pete Blum and wife and the Gurewitzes and other members at a Post installation of officers, early perhaps late 1970s.

Starr-Faye Legion of Honor Post 672

This page is intended to serve as a memorial and repository for the now-deactivated Post, which was founded in the mid 1950s and remained active until recently, when it was merged with a more active unit.


Post 672 was founded in the mid 1950s by Morris Starr, Benjamin and Jack Sturman, Benjamin and Peter Blum, Dr Sigmund Faye (1918?-79) and others. Morris Starr was a disabled veteran of World War One, who was crippled and blinded by a gas attack while advancing with the US Marines in what became the "Drive on Berlin" that preceeded the November 11th, 1918 Armistice.


Dr Sigmund Faye, pictured below handing out Post awards to Ben and Jack Sturman, was a noted dental surgeon born and raised in Germany before emmigrating to America as a teenager. He distinguished himself during WWII for leading a daring and successful volunteer behind-the-lines rescue mission in France from which there was little hope of returning alive. He was dressed as, of all things, a Nazi SS officer whom he impersonated successfully, signing for and rescuing a group of US POWs awaiting Gestapo interrogation.


Benjamin Sturman (1910-96) was a Marine combat dog handler and his brother Jack (1913-2000) was an aircraft maintenance Tech Sergeant in the USAAF in New Guinea who went TDY to Biak Island to organize the aero repair facilities there under combat conditions. He enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor together with Ben. The Sturman brothers' friend in South Philly, Jack H Feldman, US Army Air Corps never had a chance to join the post because he had been killed in action at Hickam Field, Pearl Harbor, Dec 7th 1941.

Mannie Weiss saw combat action in the Pacific as an infantryman. Other data added as I get it.

In this page, under construction, we will discuss the lives and activities of these men and others, and hopefully present some memorabilia of the Post down through the years:

parades and memorial services, VA Hospital visits, Chapel of Four Chaplains Immortal Chaplains Homepage, and other things of interest that the men engaged in.


To be continued!


DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS

The last sunbeam
Lightly falls upon the finish'd Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking
Down a new-made double grave.

Lo, the moon ascending
Up from the east, the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense and silent moon.

I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,
As with voices and with tears.


I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums
Strikes me through and through,

For the son is brought with the father,
In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans, son and father, dropt together
And the double grave awaits them.

Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin'd,
('Tis some mother's large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing.)

O strong dead-march, you please me!
O moon immense with your silvery face, you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.

The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.

Walt Whitman



Jack Sturman's Last Salute, April 2000

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