VOLUME 1, CHRONICLE 23, MEMORIAL DAY, CASUALTIES OF WAR: By the time most read this, local scouts will have spent their Saturday morning placing flags on white markers at National Cemetery in observance of Memorial Day. My Dad returned from the Korean conflict, over 36,000 Americans did not. Veterans Day is his day, like it is for my father-in-law Tom, my friend Mel, & others resting in National Cemetery, not Memorial Day, the day set aside for casualties of war, those that sacrificed it all in defense of our country. Boys that left home at 18 or 19 & layed motionless as men forever 21 or 22, forever a casualty of war at places like Lexington, Gettysburg, or Omaha Beach. I believe anyone that served in a theater of war is a casualty, some piece of them never came home. Like many of his generation, my Dad didn’t talk much about or seek acclaim for his service. He, they, had a role to play, took the stage & played it. Men who would be totally unfamiliar with the colors in today’s charisma over character landscape. What he, they, saw, heard, & smelled, that mob resided rightly or wrongly, in the darkness of their minds & in their guts. They lived football Coach Paul Brown’s axiom, “When you lose say nothing, when you win, say less”. The little my Dad chose to share included: Christmas ’52 in a foxhole, his companions, an ever dwindling bottle of scotch & a promise to God if He’d get him home. God did & every Christmas, promise kept. A terrifying night with a few soldiers, each behind a machine gun, waiting for the Chinese to crest a rise with possibly their final instructions ringing in their ears, “If they come, try to last 30 minutes.” He never watched M*A*S*H, he’d seen & felt enough of the real thing. The icy Hell of Korea’s winter left his cheek vulnerable to frosty days. The hotter than 12 yards of Hell night when war got real, lit by moonlight & fire from exiting bullets, triggers got pulled & a shadowy figure fell, never knowing if the bullet was his & if it was fatal, if the figure was a hard core lifer or a kid like him, scared & wanting only to make it till morning, only wanting to go home. Or the night he didn’t plan on sharing as he & his 5th grade son went to a prep football game & some boys thought lighting firecrackers under the bleachers would be funny. Not funny to my dad, scary to his son, as he sprang to his feet, a look in his normally placid eyes the son had never seen, a lost piece unwanted & unexpectedly found. Seoul, South Korea hosted the ’88 Summer Olympics. Dad & I watched the opening ceremonies & as TV cameras panned the city, my Dad uttered, “..it looks nothing like it did when I was on R & R…” I asked him if he’d like to go back. His direct “yes” surprised, his follow up, more so, “there’s a few boys I’d like to see & say goodbye.” He then gave me the look that fathers give sons when a subject & its discussion have concluded. In the 25 years from that day until he passed, I never brought it up again. My dad, like many, managed to quell the mob of sight & sound & smell in his mind’s foxhole, functioning without the pieces he, they, left behind. For 22 other veterans a day, the mob of sight, smell, & sound of war turns riotous & those 22 take fatal measures to silence the crowd. One of those, my friend’s uncle Reid, a Sergeant & helicopter waist gunner in the 1st Air Cavalry in Vietnam. Whether it was a mental screenshot of war’s horror, a face he left behind on a rooftop or a hand grasping a departing chopper’s landing skids he had to step on as Saigon fell, or like my dad, a buddy that never got a farewell, in May 2018, something lit one firecracker too many. One too many unshackled demons turned the rampage inside to a massacre. One more of 22 veterans became a statistic. One more parent childless, one more child orphaned, one more niece without an uncle, one more family with an eternally empty chair, 22 times a day. Those that paid it all should be honored, should be remembered for being a casualty of freedom. Those that returned & managed to live without the pieces they left behind & those 22 a day that returned & couldn’t manage those lost pieces, those casualties of war should be remembered too…
(This was originally posted Memorial Day 2023. Special thanks to my friend Courtney for letting me share her uncle’s story. To help stop military suicide, join the #22ADay movement)