A Memorial Day Story

OS has a few good friends, and one of them has been kind enough to tell him his story as it unfolded over the years. He gave me leave to tell his tale, with sufficient smudging of the details to preserve the anonymity and dignity of both the living and the departed. If you think you know the persons involved, be assured you don't. They are real people, though, and this is a true story. As have all good stories, is has a moral, and OS will just go ahead and get to it:

If the US government is going to put its young people in harm's way, it better have concrete, well-defined goals, a plan to get there, and a definition of 'We Win'. Otherwise, it should sit tight.

And, it should always finish what it begins.

So, with that said, OS would like to relate his friend's story:

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I remember Stephen dimly, as I had just turned twelve when the news of his death arrived to our house. My father, George, had served with his father, Sam, in the Marianas campaign, which was a bloody grind. If memory serves correctly, they were in the same company.

Our families were next-door neighbors in the years shortly after the war, and the Millers remained in that little house in that little Southern town until Sam's death a few years ago.

Our family moved to different neighborhoods, but we always were in touch with one another. Sam was a fireman who built and flew r/c planes as a hobby, and always seemed to have a project car going in his garage as well. He was so kind, a man of few words, but large of heart.

The news arrived at our house by phone, and I saw Mom disintegrate into distraught tears. I asked what was wrong, and she cried: 'Stephen's been killed in Vietnam!'

The following days were a blur, with the funeral at a Church of God located nearby, next to the local funeral home. I had no real grasp of what had happened, just that everything about life had changed; obviously for Sam, his wife Mary, and younger son Billy, but for us as well.

I had never seen real grief before, and in the years that followed, this grief never went away. It sprouted and grew in the lives of the surviving family. Sam retreated into his Marine stoicism, until the final years, when old age brought back the memories of being wounded, patched up, sent back into the fight, only to be wounded again--three or four cycles at least, compounded by the loss of his first-born son; knowing the US had lost the war that had taken his boy and crippled his family. His death was a mercy, but it left my father bereft of his last friend. I watched him slowly fade away into his loneliness.

Billy attempted to enlist in the Marines as soon as he was eligible, attempting to mislead the corps about his status as sole surviving son. He was, of course, discharged, and sent home. He retreated into work, any work he could find; married, had a child, divorced, drifted, and finally found some peace via Christian faith.

Mary just seemed to die inside. Mom and other friends did what she could, and the doctors kept the antidepressants going, but Mary never came back.

At our house, the grief and fear nested to remain. My older brother, at age sixteen, already violent, began acting out even more than before. My mother knew the draft was coming for him, if his number was low enough, and his school grades were not good, to say the least. She was terrified of losing him, as Mary had lost Stephen, as she herself had lost her first (and perhaps only) true love to WWII in North Africa. My father retreated into his job, his fishing, Boy Scouts, and his constant attempts to corral my brother. I retreated into books, music, girlfriends, church--anything I could respectably do to escape, determined to not be my brother, at any cost. I didn't know what depression was, or that I now lived in the grip of it.

Brother's draft number was in the 320's; so he headed off to college, to wash out, briefly marry and violently divorce; return to another college, drop out, work, re-enter college, chase skirts, drink, fish, drop out, re-enter and finally cobble together a bare-pass state university B.S. after eight years. He eventually married again, bore two sons (like Dad), entered Dad's line of work, bought a house that looked just like the one he grew up in, and buried himself in work, fishing, Boy Scouts--just like Dad. Dad died about two years ago, and brother followed him to the Great Beyond just nine months later, giving his world about ten days' notice that he was suffering an untreatable and aggressive cancer. It fell to me to tell Mom that no, he was not getting better, and yes, he was going to die, soon. I visited him a couple of times before he expired, to find him still angry as always.

I skipped the funeral. It was Brother's show, no need to interfere with it, as I was the bad son who had decided two decades earlier to escape the vale of tears that seemed to break irrevocably over us all in October 1966.

My story is not that interesting. I stuck to my plan of pursuing respectable productivity until the depression took over and would not be ignored. There was a long journey through a dark tunnel, and I little suspected what glories lay on the other side--a loving marriage, children I am humbled to know, a few good friends, and work that produces good things for a lot of other people. I carry a few regrets that don't bear mention here, with blessedly no side trips into major insanities like drug use or crawling into a bottle. But years were lost, and can never be recovered, although I wake up every morning hoping I can claw a few days back if I work hard enough at it.

This whole tale, of course, cannot all be laid at the feet of the death of one Marine. As in all of life, there are many moving parts in every story, many choices made for good or ill by all persons involved.

But 20 October 1966 was a watershed in all our lives.

Rest in peace, Stephen. I hope somehow the grieving stops here, and I pray my children won't live under its shadow.

God bless your memory, and God bless and preserve the United States of America.



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