Memorial Day
Today is considered Memorial Day because someone in 1968 decided that Federal employees should have a 3-day weekend (as well as all those other holidays now spent on Mondays). Memorial Day to me is still May 30 as originally intended.
But so be it – few even recall what Memorial Day represents other than “the beginning of (official) summer!”
Originally “Decoration Day” – a day to decorate the graves of Civil War soldiers, the holiday was recognized by all states by 1890. After the world wars, it became a day to remember all soldiers who died in war.
Congress changed the date from May 30 to the last Monday in May in 1968 (during the height of Vietnam and LBJ) and formalized the change of name to “Memorial Day” in 1971.
The VFW declared:
“Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed a lot to the general public’s nonchalant observance of Memorial Day.“
My family has been tremendously lucky in times of war: direct ancestors on both sides of the American Revolution survived hale and hearty. None in the War of 1812 or Mexican War. All survived the Civil War (both sides). None in the Indian Wars or Spanish War. All survived WWI (with injuries), WWII, Korea (with injuries), and Vietnam. None in anything later … counting direct line and out to 1st cousins of each. One distant relative survived Little Big Horn, another survived the Spanish War … neither being close enough to consider “related” (Though I have one “relative” whose most recent common ancestor was born in Philadelphia in 1776 – a bit distant eh? Not even close enough to get married in Kentucky).
Only medal awarded I know of was Bronze Star with V.
As I’ve mentioned before, I missed that little kerfluffle in the jungle by the skin of my teeth and the grace of the release of the Pentagon Papers which caused a change in troop allotments. My draft orders were rescinded.
Many of those of my age and acquaintance weren’t so lucky but I only know of one that died over there. My cousins all made it back uninjured. I’m not aware that any friends were draft-dodgers but I know of at least one with a dishonorable discharge – never found out why.
It is my once-upon-a-time friend Jim who I remember on this day. Jim was a Marine. He was proud of his country and bucked the trend of the times:
“Hey, hey, LBJ. How many kids did you kill today?“
“And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn
Next stop is Vietnam“
I’m still not sure how I feel about those days. Peer pressure for sure. Kent State was a big thing at that time. That war was a useless example of political posturing, profiteering, and lies to the world and especially the American public. But I was never a “hippie” and didn’t care for what I came to understand as socialist ideas. I was old enough in ’64 to consider Barry Goldwater as my choice – I still have one of the books he put out: “Why Not Victory?“. I was kinda young for such things …
If you must fight a war, fight it to win. It seems we didn’t want to win in Vietnam.
But even being half Canadian, hopping the border wasn’t a consideration – I am American. Joining the Air Force might have happened. I wanted to fly B-52s … not bad enough to enlist on my own though.
Water long under the bridge but the after-effects are still with us.
Jim joined up as soon as he was old enough.
And then he came back.
At least his body returned.
My cousin was in the Marines as well. A few years older, he was in one of the Marine regiments at Khe San. He made it back – we get together every so often and play poker, drink beer, and not talk about the war.
Jim and I weren’t real close … but we weren’t really distant either. We went to school together, Boy Scouts together; would get together and do things small town high school kids did. After he got back from Vietnam, we’d get together down at the B-Bar and have a few beers, talk over older times … and in hindsight, it seems he was trying to re-connect with his life as it once was.
It didn’t take … so far as I ever knew.
We never really talked of his time in service; he said it was something we didn’t want to know and he didn’t want to talk of it. He never said if he regretted joining up. At least at that time, he wasn’t rah, rah Marines though. So many of today’s Vietnam vets talk as if they were happy and anxious to join up. Didn’t seem they felt that way at the time – so many were unwillingly drafted or given the choice of jail or service … at least those close to my age. Jim may have been the only one I knew fairly well that enlisted by choice.
My life took me away a few years later. Last I recall seeing Jim, he was sitting in a corner at the B-Bar – a small narrow place, room enough for the bar along one wall, an aisle to squeeze through, and narrow booths along the other wall. Pat, the bartender – a girl/now woman – of our age keeping an eye on him. Jim would break down crying at odd times and lose himself. Jim had never been that type; he was the type to prefer the Marines over the other services. I felt … not sorry, not pity – perhaps anger at those that caused this with so little care about the consequences of their numbers game.
I suspect our last words were something along the lines of “See you later“; I didn’t know then I wouldn’t be back and never see him again.
I lost touch with home and all the people there. I still have some family there but they are younger than me – too young for Vietnam – and didn’t know my peers. Mom’s buried there but I don’t go back anymore myself – town’s changed beyond recognition – from 7500 to 150,000 or more. The dirt roads I used to roam are 7 lanes wide now with traffic lights and road rage. The cornfields are full of multi-million dollar mansions packed together like sardines. The trains are long gone, so are the tracks – and the ghosts themselves have faded away. There’s no point stirring up resting spirits – even if I could get through the traffic.
And B-Bar’s long gone … even the trace of it has disappeared.
I hear stray rumors/facts every now and then. I’m at the age where friends and acquaintances passing on becomes more common. Joe’s gone; so is Dave. Sue disappeared, Becky killed herself, so did Linda. I heard Tom died a few years ago. I heard from one former serious HS girlfriend about 15 years ago; nothing since. Lost touch with Scott and another Joe. No reason to think they aren’t still around. A few – Eric, another Dave – turned into sufferers of TDS and cut off contact …
A day of remembrance …
I never did hear anymore about Jim … or Pat either for that matter. I suspect Jim has passed on. Maybe – wherever – he’s found peace within himself again.
The band Kansas said it better than I can: “Dust In The Wind“.
I play that tune on Memorial Day.
Here’s to a remembrance, Jim … wherever you may be.
Nicely written DT, and quite evocative.
That picture. I was born in Gettysburg and spent the first few years of my life there, then moving to rural Carlisle just to the north. I wandered the battlefields many times and the graveyards too.
Going all the way back, all the males in my family joined the militaries, there was never any question about it, and I knew from an early age I too would one day be a soldier. That day came on 20 June 1974 when I was 19 years old. I never seen any war but less than a year in and I became a disabled soldier but finished my 4 year commitment any way.
Things were changing during my time as an army soldier and not for the good. I didn’t like the army and I didn’t like even more what it was turning into. When our own son turned 18 and was required by law to register I was appalled this faceless tyrant was demanding direct access to our only child. I had a talk with our son and he reaffirmed the breadth of the changes I saw occurring. He told me he had no intention of joining up. I still have mixed thoughts on all of it, and it’s just one more thing I ponder while sitting on the front porch.
This afternoon I will go to the IGA like I always do on Decoration Day and the old soldier (like me!) will be at his little fold-up table out front. He will hand me a fake Poppy flower and I will hand him a fiat (fake?) $20 federal reserve note. This evening I will burn big sausages on the grill and sip some brews.
Thanks for the good read.
I agree with Ghost, DT. A very good read.
A worthwhile read today is James Kunstler’s rumination upon Memorial Day and the BIG WTF has America been fighting. A civil war in the purest sense is ignorance and suicide. https://www.kunstler.com/p/the-war-on-us
Been hitting Jim’s site every Mon & Fri for nye on 20 year, after I saw him on an hour long PBS show called The Long Emergency. Lot’s of good info in the comments section.
Valuable thoughts, memories and pondering, DT.
As always, DT, beautifully written.
I count myself as very lucky that stars aligned to have my service to be as a Cold Warrior, where (for the most part) the two powers played a strategic game of pushing up against each other while knowing that going to hostilities was going to be the end of us. That said, I did lose two colleagues, one who I barely knew and can’t remember his name, and the other who was a friend who died early of an aggressive cancer. When I entered into Air Force Undergraduate Pilot Training, the first thing they did was to split your class in two. Each half would go through the program together, but you’d really never see the other half of the class, and the nameless guy was in my class, but on the opposite side of the split. His death really sucked though. Not long after you began in the second part of the syllabus in T-38‘s, they would hold an Open House (which we called “Red Carpet Day) where your wife or significant other could see what it was that you did all day. And it was on this Red Carpet Day that he and his Instructor Pilot were killed in the traffic pattern. During a normal turn to your final approach (basically, the final mile before landing), you’d do a descending 180° turn to the runway with the gear and flaps down. Done normally, the airplane would shake like you were driving on a washboard road. However, as you exceeded the critical angle of attack and entered into a stall, it would seem as though the potholes in the washboard road had gotten deeper and more widely spaced out. A traffic pattern stall was insidious and you had to watch out for it (we practiced the recovery all the time). Anyway, this guy’s wife was made a widow in her early 20’s after he was killed while she was in the building. And I knew Jim when I was flying C-130’s. He had a son one year older to the day than my son and lived 3 doors down from us. When I first met him, he was carrying a little extra weight, nothing near what would get him attention from anyone, but enough that I noticed that he began to lose some of it. I thought “No big deal. Jim’s working out.”. Anyway, he PCS’d out to North Carolina with stop enroute for a school he had to attend. And it was while he was at that school that they found the cancer that killed him. They opened him up to do what they could, only to find that there was far too much cancer for them to remove, and stitched him right up. He was gone in a matter of weeks. [Oddly, I found out later that his wife ended up marrying the Army mortuary guy who had dealt with Jim’s body. She was a sweet girl, and again, I really feel sorry for the women who find themselves as widows so early in their lives, but that was a little weird.]
And my dad died of a blood cancer–Multiple Myeloma–that he had reason to believe was service related. His service during the Vietnam conflict was as the back-seater in an OV-10, where he was running the laser on what were the US’s first smart bombs. He was based at Nakhom Phanom Air Base in the northeastern part of Thailand, right up near the border with Laos and about 60 miles from Vietnam. They were close enough to the Ho Chi Minh Trail that the area around NKP was heavily defoliated with Agent Orange. And, as the world later found out, Agent Orange exposure is linked to Multiple Myeloma.
I’m proud of my service, and am deeply appreciative of those who served in hotter conditions than I can claim. In honor of them all, I had my flag flying this morning right as the sun came up and I’ll get it down later tonight.
All of you gentlemen have my deepest respect.
The things they Carried….
They carried P-38 can openers and heat tabs, watches and dog tags, insect repellent, gum, cigarettes, Zippo lighters, salt tablets, compress bandages, ponchos, Kool-Aid, two or three canteens of water, iodine tablets, Sterno, LRRP- rations, and C-rations stuffed in socks.
They carried standard fatigues, jungle boots, bush hats, flak jackets and steel pots.
They carried the M-16 assault rifle.
They carried trip flares and Claymore mines, M-60 machine guns, the M-70 grenade launcher, M-14’s, CAR-15’s, Stoners, Swedish K’s, 66mm Laws, shotguns, .45 caliber pistols, silencers, the sound of bullets, rockets, and choppers, and sometimes the sound of silence.
They carried C-4 plastic explosives, an assortment of hand grenades, PRC-25 radios, knives and machetes.
Some carried napalm, CBU’s and large bombs; some risked their lives to rescue others.
Some escaped the fear, but dealt with the death and damage.
Some made very hard decisions, and some just tried to survive.
They carried malaria, dysentery, ringworm, jungle rot and leaches.
They carried the land itself as it hardened on their boots.
They carried stationery, pencils, and pictures of their loved ones – real and imagined.
They carried love for people in the real world and love for one another. And sometimes they disguised that love: “Don’t mean nothin’! “
They carried memories. For the most part, they carried themselves with poise and a kind of dignity.
Now and then, there were times when panic set in, and people squealed or wanted to, but couldn’t; when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said “Dear God” and hugged the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and begged for the noise to stop and went wild and made stupid promises to themselves and God and their parents, hoping not to die.
They carried the traditions of the United States Military, and memories and images of those who served before them.
They carried grief, terror, longing and their reputations.
They carried the soldier’s greatest fear: the embarrassment of dishonor.
They crawled into tunnels, walked point, and advanced under fire, so as not to die of embarrassment.
They were afraid of dying, but too afraid to show it.
They carried the emotional baggage of men and women who might die at any moment.
They carried the weight of the world.
THEY CARRIED EACH OTHER.
Tim O’Brien
That’s an outstanding book, gs.