Remembering Those Who Gave Their Lives for This Country

Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer

Today is Memorial Day, a time set aside to honor those soldiers who gave their lives in service to our country.

I was once among those calendar fundamentalists who made a loud and pointed distinction between Memorial Day and Veterans Day, but a couple of friendships decades ago changed my mind.

When I was a student at Golden Gate Seminary in Mill Valley, Calif., more than four decades ago, two of my fellow students were veterans who still felt fresh off the plane from the Vietnam War, though a few years had passed. Both served more than one term in-country, and both were obviously fundamentally changed from their wartime experiences.

Johnny was a member of the nearly forgotten Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol. He traveled with three fellow soldiers far from friendly forces in the depths of the jungle for long periods of time, part of an important group providing critical intelligence and whose positive impact far outnumbered their numbers.

Johnny decided to go to seminary after bouncing around job to job after returning home. Tall and fair-haired, few would guess he spent more than two years virtually alone in the dark jungles of wartime Vietnam. He was a quiet young man who looked perpetually tired. Little wonder, Johnny could never put together more than an hour or so of sleep at a time, starting awake with the slightest noise, or a moving shadow or light. Instead, he walked the campus most of the night, moving quietly up and down the hill that offered a clear vista of San Francisco, just across the bay.

I first met him on campus while up late working on a paper. I was interrupted by a persistent, gentle rap on my window around 2 a.m., something both startling and a little spooky. Mill Valley offers weather that has little need for heating or air conditioning, and few windows have screens, so when I pulled the curtain, I saw Johnny, in his old fatigue jacket (always in that jacket), standing close enough to step into my room.

“Do you have any nickels or change for a dollar,” he said. “Need it for the machines.” I gave him my nickels and a couple of quarters and soon became one of his regular nightly stops when he saw my light on late at night (which was almost always, I am one who has always, and continues to keep owl’s hours). We soon began getting breakfast and lunch together, where I got his story. He said he started seminary hoping God would help him get back to more like he was before he was drafted, because he never felt good anymore. I never forgot this quiet desperation of a young man who sacrificed something for his country he would likely never get back.

We lost track of each other over the years, but I never forgot our conversations and friendship. I don’t want to forget.

I met Tony in California as well. He served three tours in-country. The polar opposite of Johnny, Tony was short, round and loud. He told entertaining stories of his not-so-distant days in Vietnam, including one where he had a suit custom made while on R-and-R in Hong Kong that circled the globe three years before getting to his home address in America (by then he had outgrown the suit). But when talking to him one-on-one, Tony talked more about not being able to adjust when coming home and reenlisting for additional tours of duties which left him, like Johnny, unable to sleep and with night terrors and crying jags he could not control which popped up randomly, including more than once in class, left him always red-eyed and manic. He also was in seminary because he hoped God would help him recover some of what, in his words, “I lost over there.”

Both of these men deserved better treatment than they got. Watching them jump at any loud noise and struggle was a lesson for me.

Johnny and Tony were not close, neither had friends they mentioned, other than me. My hope is they found some measure of peace in life, but I will never know.

Which brings us back to Memorial Day, traditionally a time to honor those who lost their lives in military service to this country. But I would argue, many who did not die also lost their lives to the trauma of war.

My friends were drafted and served their country well, but neither came home the same person. In many ways they lost their lives over there. This story has played out in untold numbers of those who served in all our nation’s armed conflicts. In more recent years, I met a young veteran of fighting in Iraq who started a local Post Traumatic Stress Disorder group in an attempt to recover what he lost in that war. And still others who managed to return from bombs, gunfire and fighting and daily risks of their lives still struggle mightily to find sufficient health and mental health care.

So, while we honor those who died in armed conflicts serving our country today, it’s also appropriate to honor and remember the men and women who lost at least part of themselves in combat and both mourn and struggle with this loss.

If you know someone like this, don’t forget to check on them today.