This Memorial Day was sadder than usual because most of the people we would have visited while we were in our old hometown have passed. We're the last of our generation. I wonder who, if anyone, will decorate our parent's graves when we are gone.
The days of families meeting at the cemetery on "decoration day," visiting with each other, perhaps having a picnic nearby and even having a hymn sing in the weathered old church building that was always located on the grounds of a country graveyard are long past. That culture of respect for our passed loved ones is long gone. This year, there was only one scant aisle of "decoration flowers" at Wal Mart and the selection was sparse and cheap.
I also made my annual visit to the grave of Capt. Michael D. Casey, United States Army. He died on my birthday in Binh Dinh Province, Republic of Viet Nam in 1970. He was awarded the Silver Star for pulling several wounded members of his team to safety under heavy enemy fire before he was taken out himself.
I've done a lot of soul searching about why I obsessively visit his grave year after year, leaving the traditional veterans penny on his headstone as a sign of respect. I didn't know the guy. Barely met him. He didn't even go to school locally. He was a graduate of one of the last classes of the Oklahoma Military Academy. This year the answer came to me. Survivor guilt.
In 1968 when I enlisted everybody knew the war in Vietnam was lost. Not because we couldn't win but because the politicians in Washington preferred to play politics with it. We could have been in Hanoi within thirty days or left it a smoking hole in the ground anytime we chose if there had been the political will.
But, the scum that had taken over the streets and college campuses of the U.S. were throwing rotten eggs at men in uniform, spitting on them, beating them up and insulting them both living and dead. They brought the war to the streets of the U.S. in a way that no foreign power could have and defeated winning U.S. troops on the ground through political pressure. Nobody in their right mind would risk dying in a war their country no longer cared about. And yes, I do have real thing for hippies and left wingers. A visceral thing. They got a lot of good men in my generation killed. Far better people than them.
When my time came the combination of my education and intelligence scores allowed me to serve honorably doing something besides carrying a rifle through the rice paddies of Southeast Asia. I took advantage of the opportunity in a heartbeat. When the time came for assignment to a theater of operations, I again had options. I "dream-sheeted" for and was assigned to amphibious forces Atlantic Fleet, about as far from Southeast Asia as you could get.
I had my reasons. I had a wife and a child to think about. I was doing important, honorable work that most people couldn't. At least I hadn't faked a medical condition through a cooperating doctor or rigged a just serious enough felony conviction through a cooperating judge that would magically disappear in a few years as some did. I had ex-friends that did both. Notice I say ex-friends.
Logic told me I had nothing to be ashamed of. But I was ashamed. Getting to know the Marine grunts headed for "Nam" sobered me. In my heart I knew that, dumb, loud, boisterous and sometimes dangerous as they were, they were better men than me. I had worked the system to my advantage in ways that most of them couldn't.
But, it was the guys like Casey, the bright young career officers who were smart as a whip and the senior non-coms who knew how to game the system better than anybody that shamed me most. They didn't have to be there either. But, they were going and going back not because they wanted to but rather because it was their duty. They shamed me to my core.
So if, God willing, I am around next Memorial Day, I will once again decorate my parent's graves, pay my respects, and then look up to see Captain Casey's headstone a few yards away. I will once again walk over, pay my respects for a few moments and leave a veteran's penny as an outward sign of respect.
Hopefully next year there will be less guilt now that I have figured it out.
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