"The Making and Un-making of a Marine"

Memorial Day 2007

        Summer lays her warm blanket across the shoulders of the crowd standing at the VFW, or the parade, mostly men, with gray hair, at attention their bellies curling over their shined belt buckles. Old soldiers standing tall on this Memorial Day once called Decoration Day. You may wonder what these men are remembering as they hear taps played. For sure it's their youth, but most likely the darker side of that time. Maybe it's when someone they knew, or even loved was killed in battle. They could even be remembering the enemy lives they have taken. Some are imagining where those people they once hated would be today, whose hand would they be holding if they were alive?

        The mystery is seen in their eyes staring out over the tree line or at the horizon, if they live in the city these men are able to stare thought the steel and cement into their old battle fields.

        If you've been paying particularly close attention to these men you might know that some of them are remembering their son's or daughters eyes before they left for Afghanistan or Iraq, or worse when they came home, others are trying to remember what the eyes of the child looked like that are never coming home. It's often soldier's children that become the next generation of soldiers.

        What is it that you are doing this Memorial Day? Watching the TV footage of past Wars? Did you listen on the radio to Garrison Keller melodious voice reading the Gettysburg Address. Are you frying burgers on the back yard grill? Kicking back a few beers with the neighbors? Or have you gone to a cemetery and hung a wreath on a soldier's grave. Have you honored a man or women who give their life for you to enjoy yours?

        American's do many different kinds of things on Memorial Day, but what they seem to do best is forget their history. To help with that we have computers, ipod's, fast food, and a fantastic ability to live beyond out means which forces us to live in a future where we will eventually arrive to pay it all back.

        I have this carved African stick I got at an auction where one ancestor stands on the shoulders of another, there are ten generations standing on each other. What we in our culture have today is the flash stick that holds memories that we made yesterday.

        Why don't we pass our personal histories on to our children? In the War's since Korea the soldiers coming home have been shamed but the American public for fighting in "Bad Wars." No one wants to tell their kids about what they did in a war that there country stopped supporting after the first few shots were fired. The American soldiers of the Korean War did not climb on to the shoulders of the World War II veterans, nor did the Vietnam vets climb on the shoulders of the Korean vets. All of us since Korea stand alone on the periphery of society waiting to be invited back in. Maybe one of these Memorial days we will be.

Larry Winters USMC, Vietnam 1969-1970

Author of The Making and Unmaking of a Marine, subtitled One Man's Struggle for Forgiveness.

 
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