Remember WHY on this Memorial Day

The local American Legion conducted services at four cemeteries in the immediate area this morning. It's fun to watch the youngsters (up to 90 years of age) rounding up the spent shells from the 21 gun salute. The speaker at the service I attended mentioned that she had an uncle who had made the ultimate sacrifice and her husband also had an uncle who had made the ultimate sacrifice. The headstones of veterans are marked with metal memorials and have little American flags added for this weekend. Our little cemetery has about 90 known veterans of the 1000 or so interments. Many of those are Civil War Veterans who settled in this area shortly after the end of their service.

Received and placed a new GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) marker on my great-great grandfather's grave recently. The main portion looks similar to this:

Those are cool. Can't say as I've ever seen one.

One of my besties in the 'hood when I was a kid came home from SE Asia in a trash bag. Over the years I always seem to have a quiet conversation with him on Memorial Day, let him know he hasn't been forgotten and let him know how life turned out for the rest of us. Here's what I've had to say the last couple of years:

https://surveyorconnect.com/community/threads/a-once-a-year-chat-with-an-old-friend.326956/#post-374644

https://surveyorconnect.com/community/threads/in-memoriam-jimmy.318791/#post-318791

This morning I was out in the garage and Jimmy came to me out of the blue. One of the other kids in the 'hood left us this past year and I reflected on the fact that soon there will be more of the "old gang" up there...instead of down here. Jimmy and I had a good chat. He admonished me to put the carburetor back on one my bikes that has been sitting there way too long...

But what I'd like to share this Memorial Day is that young folks giving their lives in the service of our great nation is not uncommon at all. Since Jimmy caught a round in Cambodia there have been thousands of lives and families disrupted by the sorrow of a young person leaving us way too soon. Lives that could, maybe even should have ran their course but were snuffed short.

The Stars and Stripes have been flying on my porch post since sun up in honor of all of those lives. And it's OK to chat with friends, grill burgers and make ice cream on this holiday and generally take it easy. It's our American way. Just remember if all those kids that have come home in a flag draped box could, they would be out in the yard with us...enjoying a cold one, snackin' on a hot dog and smiling with the rest of us.

So thank you all for your service. Not one of you have been forgotten.

I used to post this around every Memorial Day just as a reminder. I kinda fell out of the habit and Larry Phipps posted it for a while. I see no one else did this year, so here are the words of the Late Bill McComber, PLS:

Memorial Day is a tough day for me.

It recalls to mind a different time in my life. Remembering can be a curse when you spent the first 20 years after being in Viet Nam trying to forget it.

It's even worse when you get mad at yourself for not being able to remember now that I try to bring it all back. It's strange that you forget so many things you want to remember and remember so much that you really want to forget.I didn't even spend a full year there, just 10 months and a few wake ups in sunny Southeast Asia. I came back physically whole. By the grace of God, barely adequate training and just plain dumb luck, I wasn't wearing a "tag" when I arrived back in the world in late October of 1968.

I suffered no more than a moderate hearing loss, a gash on the head and since, 33 years of mixed emotions and memories. I was cursed at and pissed on while standing in full dress greens at parade rest at the Pentagon in 1967 and cursed at and spit on upon my return to California in 1968. Those two events probably shaped my memory of my service time.

But Memorial Day is not a day for my self-evaluation or selfish thoughts. It's a day of remembering other people, other places, thoughts of other events.

I remember the heat. Heat that kept you from catching a full breath and held you in a vice as you stepped off that plane at Tan Son Nhut airbase. A blast furnace heat that slapped you in the face and sapped your strength so that you were always one step beyond exhaustion. Heat that deprived you of sleep and numbed your brain. Heat that made 70 degrees feel like freezing cold. My parents wondered where I was when I sent for long johns....

I remember the lush green mountains that always went up, never down. The red clay earth that when wet could immobilize any piece of machinery you could stick in it, when dry produced towering clouds of dust you choked on....

I remember the sun. The sun that created the most spectacular sunrises and sunsets I've ever been blessed to witness. A sun so bright you could feel the brightness, sense it through layers of canopy casting its rays through the myriad shadows, fading your fatigues and turning your skin to leather....

I remember the rice paddies, the terraces so beautiful from the air. They could get you killed or save your life, dikes that would stop bullets or leave you exposed if you chose to walk on them...

I remember the smells, an ethereal mixture of diesel fuel, sweat, charcoal, rotting vegetation and human waste....and the bugs they wrought, especially the pesky mosquitoes and gnats....and the disease they brought....

I remember the rain, rain that finally broke the intolerable heat and then never stopped. Rain that was as gentle as silk or as stinging as a wasp's nest. Along with the rain, the lightning and thunder. God warning us. The rains that cleansed your body and soul but created the mire that rotted the skin on your feet....

I remember the moon that shone so bright you could read a map by its light. The moonlight dancing on the foliage so that you saw beauty one moment and imagined slinking VC the next....

I remember the beauty of the orange and green tracers dancing lazily through the night sky, at the same time the prayers that none would come to roost with me....I remember the colors and sounds of explosions, close at hand. The white center bleeding out to a yellow ring surrounded by black rolling smoke. So beautiful and terrifying at the same time. The sound of a hundred freight trains all crashing at once. The ringing in my head that has never quite gone away....

But above all, I remember the people. The faces, the personalities and human events which still crowd my memories and dreams with pleasure and pain. I can remember entire conversations and events in explicit detail. But, I cannot remember the last names of those who were my brothers that short, short year. I try to remember but can't and don't know why--we knew each other so well. Shouldn't all this be the other way around?

I remember Hagbag, who was leaving as I was arriving, but took the time to help me find my way.

I remember Fat Eddy, who drove a jeep over a buried 105 shell buried in the road.

I remembered the kid from New York, who with his guitar helped transform some of our evenings into near normalcy.

I remember holding my best friend, Jerry, a quiet guy from Moline who assured me I was all right after he had just stepped on a bobby trap that blew away his legs. He died on the slick ride back to Pleiku. Jerry, I called your wife yesterday. She says she still loves you.

I remember Dusty, who fell asleep on guard duty one night after 48 straight hours of duty. Dusty, God forgive me for not doing more to get you out of LBJ. And Smitty and the other guy who were standing watch in a guard tower in the middle of the night, but forgot to look straight down. And so many others that are just a blank spot in my mind....

I remember Rousseau, a gentle bear of a black man who transformed our rations from unpalatable to bearable and cooked us feasts at least once a week. So likable, so quite, so opposite of the man who went over the edge one dark night after accidentally shooting his best friend.

I remember the Captain of infantry, a leader of men, who I only knew for 24 hours while sharing a ride in the back of a cargo plane, who two weeks after arriving back home, shot the family dogs and then himself. I only knew him as Dave on that long plane ride home.

Of the hundreds I knew, I kick myself for remembering so few. Especially on this day of remembrance when I should remember them all. They are the ones who paid for this Memorial Day and I will carry their message as long as I can.

Bill McComber , Professional Land Surveyor CO.

Thank you Stacy for posting this. It brings to mind all of the ones I knew that went over to Viet Nam and did not come back and the ones that did come home but were not the same as they were before they left. Some people are able to deal with the atrocities of war better than others. I did not have to go over there but for the grace of God and Tricky Dick's getting the US the hell out of that mess. My father was in the Korean war and my father-in-law was in the Second World War. In fact he was stationed in Hawaii when the planes started dropping bombs on them. He came home with a Bronze Star, he called in a warning to the base headquarters that they were under attack. War is not good but if in war, remember the words of Sun Tzu in The Art of War, know your enemy and beat him at the least cost to your forces. This is a paraphrase but you get the idea. We should have fought that war to win not just wast time and lives. To All of you Viet Nam veterans, please take this as a thank you that you probably did not get, thank you for your service. You all know who you are and thank you to all other veterans, thank you for your service. May God grant you peace.