Spent the day so far in kinda deep thought and now heading out to drive in circles on my mower while drinking a beer or three. On any other weekend this post would seem annoyingly self serving, but I decided to leave it to you to decide if it fits.
After struggling to find words I went to YouTube and listened to a bunch of appropriate and semi appropriate tunes…
I found one that suits me and my mood. Doesn’t seem to need a bunch of additional words from this seat.
I also remember.
Therefore, a bowed head and a silent prayer is offered.
And respectfully a hand salute is rendered to those on the Wall.
Rest Well my Comrades In Arms.
Ralph is the only one of my high school friends whose name is on The Wall. I don’t think of Ralph every day. I can’t say that I think of him often. Yet memories of him come unbidden at irregular moments often enough that I’ve never really forgotten him. Had he enlisted he might have ended up in the Signal Corps, but he was drafted and became an 11B. On those occasions when I think of Ralph, I wonder if anyone in Ayer, MA, still remembers him. I hope so.
http://www.virtualwall.org/dw/WattsRO01a.htm
I moved to Shirley in 1965. Ralph was gone before I got there, so I never knew him, but it still gives me a chill. I do remember Doug Moore and another who died in Vietnam. I was in the Tonkin Gulf at the beginning of the end. We lost a lot of men there in 1972, KIA, MIA and POWs. You may not think of them all the time, may not even remember their names, but you never forget.
19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3LdMAqUMnM
It’s apropos, Zero.
So long as we remember them, they’re not completely gone.
Zero………..Spot on!
That God Damn wall! It haunts me every time I see it!
I can’t watch it. After all these years the emotions are more raw than ever. The 25th ID patch on the hat above got me going….spent a little time in Cu Chi hospital before being sent home. Haven’t gone to the wall – seems as I get older the going gets tougher.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyNkS0HCroo
Dear mother how I will write this line
When I know I’m counting time
I’m tired and I’m scared
I’m waiting and death’s my friend
To say in God we trust not for this
Oh the death and glory boys not for this
Dear beloved try to write to you
Through the senseless deaths of a million troops
I’m waiting my time is near
As my tears wash away my years
To say in God we trust not for this
Oh the death and glory boys not for this
Where I walk where I see
The haunting flares where my friends bleed
I see the face of the enemy
Of a man or boy who is just like me
Now you’re not there
All the tears we bled
Cut through like winters rain
Can’t you feel the pain
And if I could ever sleep again
I know till the end of time
I’d hear Their screams of pain
Dulce dulce decorum Dulce dulce decorum Dulce Dear mother I’ll write to you
Years ago, my wife and I rode to Alamagordo NM to the traveling Wall on Memorial Day weekend. Heavy rains had cleared any crowds. After a time at the wall, we got back to the parking lot, and I sat on a curb, weeping uncontrollably- for those I’d known, and for those unknown.
Guys came quietly, guys who understood, to offer help, or to leave me to it.
Is it healing, is it somehow cleansing?
Even now I can’t say.
But that wall.
That damn wall.
Well another year brings us another Memorial Day. It is a quite different day for me personally. I respect anyway people may choose to celebrate their “three day weekend” from work. Especially this one being the mark of the beginning of summer. That is one of the many freedoms we enjoy in our nation. To worship, to speak, to celebrate as we choose. I personally do not say “Happy Memorial Day” to anyone. It’s just my personal choice. If others say it to me I smile and nod and reply “Thank you, have an Honored Memorial Day as well”.
Yes, I love to celebrate as well. I like picnics and barbeques and fireworks and all the trappings of a day off and long weekends and I criticize no one for their choices.
However for me, Memorial Day is a quiet and solemn time. I remember and mourn those of my generation and my war, who I knew and loved and lost. As well, I remember those of generations past I loved and some, I never met. Those lost before I was born. My father who passed in 1978, fought through North Africa, Sicily, Omaha Beach and the Battle of the Bulge. My uncles and cousins and our close neighbors who served as Soldiers, Marines, Army Air Corpsmen and Sailors in Europe and the Pacific Island fighting. Between us was the generation who fought the Chinese backed North Koreans to a standstill.
I grew up in North Carolina. In mostly the Durham and Henderson areas. My family on Daddy’s side had lived for generations deep in the western mountains and my Mother’s family from the northern Piedmont. Marriages brought many new names and extensions to our big family. In each home was a table or wall. A wall or a table sitting prominently in the living room or the “parlor” as they called it. They were rooms of soft spoken words and treasures from past generations. It was in such a room where my grandmother lay at rest in her coffin and then my grandfather as well for visitation. In times when funerals were not as much at funeral homes, as personal family times and then buried with generation after generation in the nearby family plots. I write this to paint a picture of the quiet solemn places those rooms and walls were to me as a young boy. The presences I always sensed were there with me, even when alone.
These rooms held something else as well. Things which I learned were the reason we spoke softly in them. Rooms and things my grandmothers and grandfathers, my father and mother, uncles and aunts would all spend some time in and with, during each visit no matter the occasion. It was the table or wall where the pictures of our family members who were lost in the wars, hung in very old ornate frames or sat on hand made lace doilies. Lace many generations older than me.
I would stand in the back and listen on Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day as my grandfather would speak the names and tell of the lives and kindnesses of each man in those pictures. Though some were tin plates from the Civil War, he spoke of WWI to the present. The newest was always draped with a black ribbon for a while and moved to the front. The first family member lost in Vietnam, a first cousin was there in front with that black ribbon. They would always pause and bow their heads and ask God to hold these lost ones close and to please, someday bring them home if they had never been found. Tears would flow as one hugged another.
Then we went on with our day. The remembrance of our family members lost, was expressed in joy by those who were still there. By those they had given their lives to protect and defend. They laughed and recounted old times, as always around those dinner tables. They celebrated as those we had just bowed our heads to remember, would have asked for them to do. To remember them but enjoy their lives. To appreciate their sacrifices but enjoy and use the freedoms their lives were given for. So I learned in those young years what Memorial Day was. For me at least. I do remember and I do mourn still so many I knew, who are gone. But my heart smiles when their faces, their laughter and voices come to my memory. Most of all, I remember those quiet rooms and solemn tables. Small family altars if you will, to what that family had given. It is where I learned what honor meant. It was where I was taught the high price of the freedoms we are blessed to have. It was where I learned to never, ever forget. No, I will never forget those who gave what President Lincoln expressed as, “The last full measure of devotion”. So many I had never met but felt I knew, as though they were sitting there at the dinner table with us. Especially though, those I did know from my war, who touched my soul more closely.
Today is their day, not mine. It is about the memory of them. It is about my reflection on the high price of the freedoms we enjoy. Truly, the tree of freedom is kept alive and watered, with the blood of patriots. Too often even I, take for granted my freedoms. I say shame on me. That is the other aspect of this day. To remind me, to never take for granted what others have given their blood, their limbs and their lives for.
So I say to each of you, who with me remember a lost loved one today, to those who perhaps have lost no one close but are enjoying the freedoms we all share in our nation, I ask to please along with me, remember what that price was and who paid that high price for nation and this day.
God bless and keep each of you today. Have an Honored Memorial Day!
Serving in 74-77 I only saw the remnants of the Army that served in country.
For me, it is enough to say that I truly served in the company of heroes.
Very well written Sparks, thank you for your recollections. They do not fall on unseeing eyes or unhearing ears.
I come from a long line of military family with someone serving in every conflict this country has been in since before the Revolutionary War.
The tradition continued with my immediate family including me and my Daughter.
Beautiful Sparks, just simply beautiful. Stay well my friend.
I was in the US Army active 1986- 1989. I had a ton of Viet Nam vets teach me skills to keep me sharp when/if we had to go to war…. Thank God I never had to use them, but I went into the USAR for nine years and taught my men some of the lessons I was taught and had a good group of men….THANKS ALL VN VETS FOR MAKIN’ ME THE SOLDIER I WAS….