Watchfires are built every year at midnight on May 30th, the traditional Memorial Day, at four permanent locations in Rockland County, New York.  The locations are: Clausland Mountain in Orangeburg, Piermont Pier in Piermont, Bowline Park in Haverstraw, and Gene Levy Park in Spring Valley.

Watchfires date back to our country’s first war and have been common to all wars since then. General Washington used them to signal the ceasefire ending the Revolutionary War.

Reference is made to the use of Watchfires during the Civil War, in the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  Watchfires, 21 feet square at the base and 21 feet high were built in rows along the western shore of the Hudson River.

Since 1987, Rockland County’s Vietnam Veterans have come together to build these Watchfires according to the military regulations and specifications of the 1700‘s.
The Watchfires are lit at midnight and burn for 24 hours, with veterans standing watch and changing shifts as they did many generations ago. In Vietnam, the mountain tops were our base camps, a more secure area where a watch was kept through the night, and a special watch was kept when we had a patrol still out--so the symbolism--keeping vigil by the Watchfire for our fallen brothers, our lost patrol that still has not returned, and the patrols of past wars--back to our country’s first soldiers who fought along these very shores.
Before today’s Watchfires are lighted, a rifle with bayonet, boots, and a helmet are placed in a traditional ceremony to honor our fallen brothers. To commemorate the fallen warrior, an inverted weapon and bayonet-- a tool of war and an instrument of peace-- is placed in the ground to symbolically mark the spot where our friend had fallen.

A pair of polished jungle boots, fully laced, is placed at the base of the inverted weapon to symbolize our brother’s place on Earth, where he had fallen while standing up for liberty, in the same manner as patriots of past wars who had also made the supreme sacrifice. Finally, the helmet is placed atop the inverted weapon to protect our brother and friend, for he would no longer suffer the pain of war.

Starting at 10:00 p.m. on May 11th, 2021, The History Channel will be presenting an all-new season of America’s Book of Secrets.  

Here are some stories of interest they offered in their current issue of Mysterious History.  

During the tense period of the Cold War, the U.S. government sought to deploy a potent new weapon against the Soviet Union: mind-reading

In a highly classified project conducted first in a California research lab in the 1970s, and later at an Army base in Maryland, the CIA, Army and Defense Intelligence Agency recruited men and women claiming to have powers of extrasensory perception (ESP) to help uncover military and domestic intelligence secrets.

In 2017, the CIA declassified some 12 million pages of records revealing previously unknown details about the program, which would eventually become known as Project Star Gate. By the time the program was shut down in 1995, psychics known as “remote viewers” had taken part in a wide array of operations, from locating hostages kidnapped by Islamic terrorist groups to tracing the paths of fugitive criminals within the United States.
Read more: History.com CIA ESP Espionage Cold War

Another story covered in their current issue of Mysterious History newsletter:

MK-Ultra was a top-secret CIA project in which the agency conducted hundreds of clandestine experiments—sometimes on unwitting U.S. citizens—to assess the potential use of LSD and other drugs for mind control, information gathering and psychological torture. Though Project MK-Ultra lasted from 1953 until about 1973, details of the illicit program didn’t become public until 1975, during a congressional investigation into widespread illegal CIA activities within the United States and around the world.

The Cold War and Project MK-Ultra
In the 1950s and 1960s—the height of the Cold War—the United States government feared that Soviet, Chinese and North Korean agents were using mind control to brainwash U.S. prisoners of war in Korea.

In response, Allan Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), approved Project MK-Ultra in 1953. The covert operation aimed to develop techniques that could be used against Soviet bloc enemies to control human behavior with drugs and other psychological manipulators.

The program involved more than 150 human experiments involving psychedelic drugs, paralytics and electroshock therapy. Sometimes the test subjects knew they were participating in a study—but at other times, they had no idea, even when the hallucinogens started taking effect.

Many of the tests were conducted at universities, hospitals or prisons in the United States and Canada. Most of these took place between 1953 and 1964, but it’s not clear how many people were involved in the tests—the agency kept notoriously poor records and destroyed most MK-Ultra documents when the program was officially halted in 1973.    Read more:  MK Ultra

The Rockland County PFC Joseph P. Dwyer Veteran Peer Support Program "Vet to Vet" would like to invite military veterans of every era and their families which include their spouses and immediate families to participate in a variety of wellness activities and events occuring every week that will enhance their mental wellbeing and physical health. Many of these activities are social in nature, but all bring veterans together to bond and support each other. These activities include:

WELLNESS, HEALTH & SOCIAL :

• MEDITATION (M, W & F) from 9am to 9:30 am. Online
  
• GENTLE YOGA (Monday) from 11am to12:00 pm and (Tuesday) 5:00pm to 6:00pm. Online
  
• VETERANS WALKING CLUB at PALISADES CENTER (Wednesday) at 9:30 am. In Person
• QIGONG (Ancient Chinese Exercise) (Thursday) from 9-10 am. Online
• TAPPING aka Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) (Thursday) from 4 – 5pm. Online'
• VETERANS WRITING WORKSHOP (Monday) from 6:30 - 8pm. Online
• CREATIVE WRITING GROUP Every other Friday from 2 – 3:30 pm. Online
• COOKING WITH THE CORPS Every other Wednesday from 5 pm to 6:30 pm. Online