We will spend part of Memorial day following a tradition I started when I was in High school. Ever since I was 16 I have decorated the graves of the men who have served in the armed forces during a war. Its not much, just a little flag, and just a little token. And in the cemetery that I have adopted, I’m not sure any of those people actually died in a war. But its about teaching my children to respect something that I have somehow come to respect. The value of blood. Of putting one’s life on the line in the service of our country.
I can’t say exactly how this became so important to me. My dad was in the military. My grandfather was in Vietnam. I suppose growing up with that legacy made me respect the proud history of the United States military. Right now I have a renewed awe for service men and women. I read Mark Bowden’s book about the 1993 battle in Mogadishu. The description was thorough, Bowden spends dozens of pages describing moments of the battle. My dad knew two of the men who were there. Air Force PJ (elite medic) Tim Wilkinson and Combat Controller Dan Schilling. After I read Bowden’s book, I saw on Amazon that there was a book of first-hand accounts that included the accounts of Wilkinson and Schilling. (The Battle of Mogaishu: First Hand Accounts of Task Force Ranger) Wilkinson was in a team that fast-roped in to help the first downed Black Hawk. He was among the 99 men who were pinned down over night. Wilkinson risked his life three times running into heavy fire to retrieve medical supplies to treat the wounded. Schilling was part of the “lost convoy” who drove around in the hostile city getting shot up until there were more wounded than not. The convoy made it back to the UN base, unloaded the wounded and dead and then immediately rearmed and prepared to go back out. One of the comments that Wilkinson made in his account was that its easy to get a man to go into combat the first time. But the real heroes are those who have gone the first time and then willingly go back in again. He talked about how in the World Wars, those soldiers were in combat for months on end. It wasn’t just one night for them, but a droning hellish reality.
I don’t think we can comprehend what that is, even after a hundred books on the subject. These men don’t feel like heroes. And in fact, in the mind bending brutality of war, there are wounds that don’t ever heal. There are things that can’t be spoken of. There are things that defy description. Men that come back from war, even without shedding blood–they’ve paid in their blood. You can’t know and see things without it becoming a part of your body. The trauma is fed minute by minute, day after day with precious, nourishing blood. I believe our stories lie dormant in our blood. As attributed to Plato at the beginning of the movie Black Hawk Down, “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
So every Memorial day, I take my children to a cemetary that is just down the road from the house I grew up in. Nobody I know is burried there. Nobody even distanly related to me is burried there. But you can see on the grave markers to symbol, a cross in a circle. And most have the war they fought in inscribed on their stones. I pay respect to these men. They are only men in our cemetary. It is symbolic. In paying respect in that place, I am teaching my children the value of blood. We won’t know the end of war in our lifetime. We’re not even close. But I believe, if we could just try to comprehend the sacrifices. If we could multiply them millions of times over. If we could even try to comprehend the enormity of what has been done in the name of freedom… if we could comprehend the pain and sorrow of mothers and of wives whose loved ones paid in blood… I’d like to believe we might get closer to seeing the end of war. That could take a lifetime. Maybe it always has.
