On a crisp Fall day in Washington D.C. I made my way from the plaza in front of the Lincoln Memorial through the construction barriers surrounding the reflecting pool to the walkway approach to The Wall. A feeling of utter dread came over me as I approached the sidewalk intersection by the bronze of The Three Servicemen. I found I could go no further. In solitude I took a seat on the bench, covered my eyes with my handkerchief, and with bowed head and ball cap shielding my self-conscious grief I sat and wept.
Though there were things to do and places to go, it seemed as though I was anchored to that spot. Time seemed to stop and the pain continued to tick off the minutes as tourists walked by not seeing, not hearing, wrapped in their own world. I may have stayed there much longer were it not for a man, a fellow veteran most likely, who took the seat beside me. He didn’t say much, no soaring rhetoric, no words of special depth or reason. He just gently put his hand on my shoulder and told me to take all the time I needed he would stay until I could go on.
I think back to that day often and ask myself why I could not go down to The Wall. It was not a single event that had brought on that reaction, not the memories of years past. It was not the faces I can still see or the sounds that accompanied their passing through my life. The mind is a terrible and wonderful thing. It records everything and only plays back the highlight reel. Reflection, what some call meditation and others call prayer, sometimes allows you to see the picture formed when all the dots are finally connected. That day, the dots connected and my mind saw what my conscious could not. Today while reading an article by Captain Donald M. Bishop entitled “The Press and the TET Offensive” it all seemed to click.
What had overwhelmed me that day was not the war, the memories of the war, or the magnitude of the loss. It was a combination of many factors. I was in D.C. filming an Honor Flight documentary honoring WW II Veterans. I was doing something that brought be great personal satisfaction in a town that at one point in my life had given me immense pride. It seemed to me that there was truly something great about a nation that could honor the struggle for freedom whether that struggle was popular or unpopular. These thoughts were in my head as I crossed in front of the gaze of Lincoln from his seat in his memorial. They were palpable as I looked past the World War II Memorial to the Washington Monument.
I remember the instant that the mood changed. As my lens focused beyond the Washington Monument and upon the Capital Dome I recognized that I no longer felt proud of this city. I was embarrassed that under that dome sat men and women who first thought of themselves before they thought of their nation. It made me sad to think that before the good of the people the politicians thought of the good of their campaigns. Like a cold stone in my stomach it was richly clear that ideologies now pulled the nation apart rather than the challenge of melding those ideologies for the common good drew us together.
And on that day as I walked toward a wall that commemorated the human souls that had been sacrificed in the name of that freedom I was broken by the magnitude of my thoughts. Whether for honor or pay, duty or bread, enlisted or drafted they did not shirk. They stood and they died because they were called. They may not have agreed on the cause or the mission or the method, but they were called and they had the will and the fortitude to answer. And with that, I could not face them as a living member of a society that now places a higher value on ourselves. I could not, in this town where people sought personal favor over recognition of responsibility, face the names of those who acted upon that responsibility.
And so I sat; and I wept; for myself; for my country; for what we have lost; and for the lives that will be lost to regain it. It is clear to me that it is too precious to lose forever. The human spirit will not abide such a thing. Whether it is here or there people like those whose names are on that wall that will demand it, strive for it, and some will die for it. I regret that I have lived to see what we have become. I hope I can live to see what we can be.
I have not been to DC since the Viet Nam Memorial wall went up; but I do remember the horrible impact of the war and its affect on small towns in my area!
I remember meeting a vet that lasted only one day in the war zone, and was too traumatized to continue. His unit was hit by enemy mortar fire their first night and over 60 of his friends that he trained with perished! He was on a day pass from the state mental hospital and seemed to be heavily drugged.
Throughout the war, I remember attending several funerals of friends and family killed in action.
However, I did visit the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It was mind numbing to process the fact that about 1200 American sailors died almost immediately when the bomber hit the ammunition magazine.
The price of freedom is extremely costly, and those who plot to destroy out freedom are definately un-American!
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I did not lose anyone in Vietnam, or know anyone personally who served there-I’m too young to have had those contemporaries. But I remember what it felt like when I approached the wall, only as high as my ankle with one or two names on it…and what it felt like when I reached the center, towering over me with all of those names. I felt the same thing when I visited the American cemetery, Omaha and Utah Beaches, and Point du Hoc in Normandy. When I saw the Iwo Jima memorial looming over me. I am always filled with an overwhelming gratitude to the men and women who did serve and gritted their teeth and did the hard thing-on MY behalf- while knowing they stood a good chance of not living to see the outcome. How to describe that kind of gratitude, and pride in ones fellow citizens??
Just know that the country has not let them or you down; a small number of gutless politicians who have never understood the nature of the country have let you down, but not our veterans and not the majority of the country. We still believe what you believe and want what you want, and those earlier sacrifices were not in vain. There will be more again, I’m sure, but the experiment that is the United States is worth the courage and the sacrifice. Standing in Arlington the first time, it struck me that I was seeing this incredibly unique thing: names of all ethnic backgrounds and religious persuasions, lying side by side in one military cemetery. In any other such place on earth, all of the names would be German, or all Italian, or all English….but in America they are everything, from everywhere, side by side. They all died for the ideal that is the United States. That sight really made me proud and made me realize, concretely, how exceptional this country is. No matter what the Left says. If even my 12 year old nephew knows they are wrong, and wants to know everything about your service so that he can salute you properly on Veterans Day…and he came to those feelings on his own…well, then, there is hope.
Thank you for your service. People you will never know are truly very grateful to you.
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Thanks for your service, Allen. I got an email this afternoon from a soldier deploying out of the air base at Hancock in Syracuse for parts unknown. He said only two local politicians showed up for the deployment ceremony. Rep. Buerkle sent a staffer, and there was a mayor of a small town and someone from the Syracuse city council. No other politician even bothered with it and the local media barely covered the event. How sad.
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