DEFEAT FASCISM

 On May 26, the president of the United States of America commented on Memorial Day, the day we Americans honor those who died in the service of our country.

It is a day of remembrance. It is a day that we honor "Those few, those happy few, the band of brothers [and sisters]" who gave their lives for our country.

It is a day when we all take a moment to reflect on the blood of faraway places like Normandy and nearby places like Gettysburg. It is day we recall those portions of distant fields that will, in the style of poet Rupert Brooke, forever be America.

It is a day that calls for us to become Americans, not members of a political party or religious sect.

It is one of the most sacred days of the year for American patriots.

It is a day for somber reflection and remembrance.

It is a day that demands our noblest instincts.

Proving once more that there is no bottom to his insidiousness, here is what the president of the United States of America spewed upon us:

MEMORIAL DAY

Watching all the ads for ways to celebrate Memorial Day makes me sad. Some Americans can't seem to take anything at face value anymore. Any day can fall victim to fun and frivolity. 

I'll spend some time Monday in quiet reflection at a spot on our farm where a tree line sits atop a distant rise. I'll think about the man who used to sit there with me. This time of year, the sunlight begins to appear through patches of leaves. We were sitting there once and he said, quite softly, "That always reminds me of seeing those parachutes hanging from trees, sometimes with one of those boys still attached to it."

He is the same man who said of artillery attacks, "You just pray let me live one more second … just one more second."

As I'm writing this, there is distant thunder and I'm reminded of my own experience "in harm's way." I didn't thunder where I was. The rain would just come and stay for days. If you heard rumbling, it was the sound of war, and you could only wonder who was the perpetrator and who was the victim.

On this Memorial Day, let us honor the victims who left home and family to go into situations where they might have to pray, "Just let me live one more second." Many didn't.

In Memorium III ; the last ...

It’s a little bittersweet, coming to the end of the Memorial Day Weekend. There was so much divisiveness on social media that we left and worked on the farm all afternoon. It seems that, instead of relying upon the sadness of previous wars to steer us from another, they are drawing us inexorably into another Middle East quagmire. They say that US military spending for FY 2020 will reach $989 billion once you add components hidden in other budgets. That’s nearing a trillion dollars, people.

Perhaps when you spend that much money on something, it makes you want to use it.

We ended the weekend revisiting some stories from the 79^th Infantry Division, Brenda’s dad’s unit. The first wasn’t a story he told. Rather, it was something that she read this week that he never mentioned at all. It seems that the 79^th was one of the units that discovered a Nazi concentration camp. According to the piece she found, they made the entire division view it.

As I say, he never mentioned it. He did tell about a squad of American soldiers taking a group of men claiming to be “Polski, nicht German,” behind a building and shooting them. War can make your children do things you never imagined, sometimes to other people’s children. There’s sad scene in one of the documentaries about the fine sunny morning that the United States of America began dropping bombs on the people of Baghdad. There’s a snippet where a man runs across a plaza between explosions carrying a son of maybe 11 or 12 years of age. The child has wet himself through fear, his backside revealing it to the camera. In all likelihood, he’s not an American ally today.

The other incident we discussed yesterday was one that her dad did relate. It happened during the last few days of WWII in Europe. The 79^th was encamped at some resort area in Germany, awaiting the Armistice. German forces still occupied the nearby hills and were laconically, it seems, getting rid of their artillery. They were lobbing shells in with no apparent tactic in mind in the general direction of the spa. A squad of Americans, including B’s dad, were lined up for chow. A random shell hit nearby and took the off the head of a soldier standing in line. It was the unit’s last casualty.

Julius would always end this story with, “And he was the shortest guy in the squad.”

War is a terrible, unpredictable, inexplicable thing. Why, after once losing more than 58,000 of our country’s best in its idiocy, we would let it all happen again is beyond me. Dick Cheney, in his grotesque and twisted “logic,” hit a nerve when he tried to justify an all-volunteer army. “Why send men to war who don’t want to go to war when you can pay men to go who do want to go to war?

Only a Dick Cheney could fail to miss such a point as lay nested therein. If only Lysistrata and her comrades were here, they might could explain it.

Shall we say "lo, look what
our hands hath wrought?

In Memorium II

I never knew either man, never even heard of them. The first? I just stumbled upon his grave one afternoon in a lonely but well-kept cemetery. It was not far from the small town of Marvell, Arkansas, one of those vanishing communities in the Arkansas Delta that sits forlorn and forgotten in these post-industrial days. It is the home area of singer Levon Helm.

 Brenda and her mom were searching for the graves of relatives and I noticed a small headstone. As soon as I saw “U. S. Marine Corps” and “1966,” I knew who rested there.

For some reason, I photographed the marker. Later I looked up the name, Perry Lee Poole. I found it, alongside a photo that could be used as a stereotype shot of the All-American Boy. From the few comments I’ve found, he was. A friend said he loved to fish and hunt and, as a youth, had dreamed of joining the Marines.

In his last letter home to his friend, after recovering from wounds he received, he commented that war was not like it was shown in the movies. He returned to action upon recovery. His name appears on Panel 11E Line 80 of the Vietnam Memorial Wall. Semper Fi, Perry.

Floyd L. Reed, Jr. of Heth, Arkansas was born on 3 November 1938 and was killed in action on 15 November 1965 in the battle of the Ia Drang valley. They say he, “died through hostile action, multiple fragmentation wounds. Incident location: Landing Zone X-ray Ia Drang Valley, South Vietnam, Pleiku province. His unit, commanded by LTC Hal more, stood off an army of North Vietnamese regulars seven times its size for three days, as immortalized in the book and film We Were Soldiers Once, and Young. Reed, is memorialized on the Vietnam Memorial Wall, Panel 03E Line 061.

I never knew him either. I read about his last battle and looked him up. I didn’t know him, but he was a brother. I hope to visit his grave at Edmonson, Arkansas on my next road trip east.

Memorial day makes me think of these two whom, as I say, I never met. I think fellow Arkansan Johnny Cash expressed it best. They are the kind of people who make America great, not those clowns who claim to be running our country now. Talk all you want about “The Greatest Generation,” and they were great. They came home, those from the Pacific Theater, through the Golden Gate, where grateful citizens had moved huge stones into position on the hills in Marin County and painted them white. The stones spelled, for those on the incoming transport ships, “Welcome Home Boys.”

When the men from the European Theater came home, women kissed them in the streets of New York.

Perry Lee Poole and Floyd L. Reed came home quietly to a divided country that has never reconciled itself with their service. It doesn’t matter. The two represent a higher form of greatness, the ultimate sacrifice, offered voluntarily, for an ungrateful nation. We are so fortunate to live in a country that produced such men. It is already great. Let’s keep it that way.

Theology Time

I suspect that you could chase a die-hard fundamentalist with a copy of The Beatitudes. I doubt that many would even believe that it was taken from the Bible they claim to love so well. In short, those teachings lie far from accepted Christian dogma for many, some quite prominent, Americans. As the book in question also warns against the futility of serving two masters, one cannot serve the Galilean of The Sermon on the Mount and Ayn Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged, the modern guide for many conservative brothers and sisters.

This brings us to the study of the next of the “blessings” as espoused on that mount: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

To grasp fully the importance of this, the eighth on the list, it would be instructive to review the past seven. If you remember, the Galilean is reported to have said

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven;

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted;

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth;

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied;

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy;

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God; and

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

So far.

As we contemplate the first seven “blessings,” let’s just imagine what the followers of the current American president would call those who make an honest effort, in their daily lives, to adhere to the words of our beloved Rabbi. Some terms come to mind.

Libtard

Snowflake

Taker

Bleeding heart

Socialist

Do-gooder

Peace dove

Of course, in direct opposition to the current popular term “nationalists,” there is an overarching term for our Beatitudinists. That would be “humanists.” Franklin Graham once said that they are “worse than Communists.” There is a wall somewhere that bears the names of 57,939 Americans who might disagree. They rest in peace among others that we honor this weekend as we hope for no more wars. Yes, the peacemakers these days run the risk of being called “surrender monkeys,” but we accept it. The Galilean would not have it otherwise.

So there we are. Of course, being called names is in no way comparable to being marched off to gas chambers. As we are told from birth, though, mighty oaks from little acorns grow. Maybe the Galilean remembered that long ago on that hill surrounded by crowds of followers. Mighty Oaks are mighty trees that know nothing of their final purpose. Mighty evil is mighty evil. Mighty good is mighty good, even if we receive the condemnation of others for pursuing it.

Maybe this came to mind in a later moment described by Matthew, when a disciple asked the Galilean, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” 22:36-40 ESV

I don’t think we’ll see that on Twitter this Memorial Day weekend.

In Memorium

All alone this morn thinking about Memorial Day Weekend. I don’t have a picnic or anything planned, just a quiet time to give a little thanks for the fact that I’m not one of the ones being remembered.

I’ve only known one person who was killed in our country’s wars. He was a high-school classmate. He and I were not close friends, but he served honorably and had a great future ahead. His name is now among the 57,939 carved into the black granite monument known as the Vietnam Memorial.

Another classmate died recently from duty in that war, this one from the delayed effects of Agent Orange. They say that everyone in the country, during the time the chemical was used, was exposed. I don’t imagine that the names of its victims will be carved on The Wall, not even the American ones.

Those who forgive, or even support, the warmongers may not understand the long-term effects of battle. I’ve learned recently that experts still consider the earth at such places as Belleau Wood (1918) and Normandy (1944) toxic. Well known, but unverified, anecdotes claim that as late as the 1960s trees in some areas of France retained enough mustard gas residue to injure farmers or construction workers who were clearing them. I’ve read about secluded and undisturbed valleys that still retain pockets of deadly gas.

In America, 50 years later, Vietnam veterans still bear the stereotype of sociopathic ne’er-do-wells, the one tragedy avoided by those with their names on The Wall.

They don’t mention these things when they whoop it up about invading some country or other.

Those I know who have worn the uniform don’t seem to get as agitated over such things as wearing a flag-decal on their lapel. Just in the last couple of days, I’ve also seen some posts by some who are exercised over regulations limiting the size of flags and the height of flagpoles. How silly. It reminds me of a comment of a close friend, fellow vet, and Iraqi invasion participant. He’s quite high up in the military now, and he once made a very pertinent observation.

“The American Flag is not an advertising gimmick.”

Love of country and all its people is a wonderful emotion. Patriotism represents a more slippery term. It has been called, with some justification, “the last refuge of a scoundrel,” (Samuel Johnson) and “often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles” (George Jean Nathan). Used in earnest and with propriety, it brings out the best in us. Used for immoral purposes, it creates monuments bearing the names of war’s victims.

In my day, some of those victims didn’t ask for the chance to add their names to such monuments. During the Vietnam War era, they tell us that one-third of veterans entered the military through the draft. By contrast, WWII saw a draft rate of 66 percent. These figures can be a bit misleading. They don’t take into account the number of those who enlisted simply to avoid being drafted into the infantry. Trust me on that one.

No matter. The fact remains that many of the names on The Wall are those of individuals drafted into the service. They include some who fought alongside Hal Moore in the Ia Drang Valley, a few who had only a few weeks left “in-country,” the term that held so many different meanings for those of us who served in that sad war.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll go to the annual Flag Day celebration in Little Rock on the grounds of the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History. There will be music, free ice cream, and a flag for each person there. At some point, the band will play The Armed Forces Medley. When it reaches Anchors Aweigh, I’ll stand and wave my flag. Last year, there weren’t any young shipmates standing. Of those of us who did, more than a few required a little extra effort in making it erect. We did it though. If for no other reason, we had to in honor of those shipmates with their names on the wall.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Four (Cont._5)

I guessed right. My promotion at the new job failed to scour in the back room. My two co-workers returned from their briefing and said nothing. There was a silence so stony it could have been used to fashion arrowheads. I ignored them, choosing instead to spend the rest of the day amending my list of projects into a more detailed plan of attack.

That night, I listened to Chet Atkins playing Spanish guitar, finished off the bottle of Ripple I had started the night before, and contemplated strategy and tactics. From my naval experience I knew that critical elements for a successful mission included buoyancy, propulsion, and maneuverability, along with firepower, of course. From a book called Vom Kriege (On War) by Carl von Clausewitz, one that I had found in our ship’s library, I remembered other principles. It was critical, in a campaign, not to let friction slow progress. That implied a need for tactical analysis. I thought and planned.

I slept the sleep of the chosen and arose early. After a calorie-laden “Bear Claw” and coffee at the Lion’s World snack bar, I headed for the office and was deeply involved in scribbling when the rest of the staff arrived.

The drafting crew went to work without looking my way. After an hour or so, I stopped what I was doing and asked where they kept some supply or other. “Don’t you know?” came the reply from the once head of the drafting room. I sensed, rather than heard, a suppressed giggle from the woman across the room.

I ignored it and searched for myself. One must avoid war at all costs, and they should be initiated only for irrefutable justification. Just ask the families of those tens of thousands who were still coming home then in coffins or wheelchairs. One shot, supposedly fired at a small naval vessel, isn’t worth 58,220 American and over three and a half million Vietnamese lives.

No, I waited for a more positive opportunity, one that could be a learning experience for us all. It wasn’t long in coming.

Jim Vines stuck his head in the drafting room and asked me to bring a print of the notes we had taken at the city of Dierks a couple of weeks before. I rose and walked to the map file. Stopping, I chose the calmest voice I could muster and asked the head drafter where the maps of that city were kept.

He completed the line he was drawing, set his pen aside carefully, turned to me, and said, “You’re the head man who’s in charge now. Ain’t you supposed to know things like that?” He turned and reached for his pen.

Here was the test. As a petty officer in the proudest branch of military service, I had profited from months on end of high-level management training, some of the best, I imagine, in the world. I mentally ran through scenario after scenario of dealing with insubordination, applied practical knowledge to empirical analysis, formed a mental “decision-tree,” and walked closer to him, calling him by name.

“What say we review that last exchange?” I said.

He laid his pen aside and looked at me as if I had just interrupted a complicated surgery. “What?”

“Let’s ask ourselves,” I said, “whether I politely asked you a question, the answer to which was simple and would help us move progress along?” I stopped, guessing correctly that information needed to be provided in small bites. When he turned to look at me, I said, “Or did I by some chance ask you for a cheap ration of shit?”

That confused him. I heard the woman swivel in her seat. I knew she was licking her lips in anticipation.

“Now,” I said, “if that sort of wise-assed response is going to be typical, I can just leave. I'll tell Tom and Jim I quit, and let you and your pal over there start back running things. That was working real well, wasn’t it?”

The air fairly roared with furious silence. He looked at me and I could feel the wheels spinning.

“Make up your mind,” I said. “I don’t have all day to put up with someone’s bullshit attitude and eighth-grade humor.”

Daggers flew from his eyes. I had seen the look hundreds of times from big, strong, men contemplating orders they didn’t particularly like, knowing how easily they could smash the giver of the orders.

He relaxed, forced a half-grin, and said, “Dierks is in the third file from the bottom.”

“Thanks,” I said. I turned to the woman, “Are we okay?”

She nodded and they both returned to their work. We never had any more problems after that. In fact, I found them to be nice people as time passed. It’s funny how well things work out within the structure of sophisticated management techniques.

Contemplating applied
management training

Reconciliation: 24

Everyone makes decisions. Some are more horrific than others. This month, back in 1944, young men their 20s were facing dreadful choices. Last evening, that came to mind afresh. We watched Twelve O’clock High, the classic Gregory Peck film, and it brought to mind something told me by the late Hal Naylor, a precious friend and hero.

Leaving college during World War Two, Hal became pilot of a B-17 flying from England to Germany before his plane was shot down during, if I recall, something like his sixth mission.

He told me how the young pilots of the squadrons faced one faithful decision even before leaving. They could take off and fly in the opposite direction for some time in order to gain altitude before turning and heading toward the German anti-aircraft emplacements in France. This improved survival odds but expended precious fuel.

Alternatively, they could head straight across the English Channel into enemy fire before gaining relatively safe altitude, but be assured of enough fuel to return to base. In the Eighth Air Force alone, 26,000 did not. Their duty almost rose to the level of suicide missions. I have read where, though they selected volunteers who were small in stature for the job, the space allotted a ball-turret gunner didn’t allow room for a parachute. Hal told me the pilot and co-pilot spaces were so cramped that they tied parachutes to their legs in hopes they could don them if they had to exit.

Decisions. Sometimes I think of the young men and women and the decisions they had to make in those days when I read where modern college students must have “safe places” where they are protected from hearing thoughts and ideas that don’t coincided with their world view. That would probably amaze a nurse who had faced the horrors of medical triage after a battle.

An amazing fact is that, today, less than one-percent of Americans will ever serve in the military. They will never face decisions like having choose between attempting to land a crippled plane and save wounded comrades, or abandoning their craft over the English Channel.

Those who have faced the ultimate sacrifice, those “happy few” as Shakespeare called them, probably have a different view of life because of the experience. The awarding of trophies of excellence to every member of a children’s sports league must seem a little tedious to a “grunt” who had to write that blank check on his life, payable to us, in order to wear the coveted Combat Infantry Badge.

Further, the fact that so few serve, in my opinion, opens all Americans to the danger that we will be drawn into useless wars that will, at first, only affect the children of others. That such adventures may eventually affect us all seems to be lost on so many. If it doesn’t affect me, what do I care? It seems to be more important that I select the best cell phone plan. I read where most of us cannot locate, on a map, the place where the last American soldier died in combat.

Sacrifice? Has it become an obsolete concept? Today we will pay service of some sort to the fallen B-17 crews, along with the sailors, infantry soldiers, medical personnel, and desert fighters who paid the awful prize for serving our country. Will our main decision be what beer to bring to the picnic? A much better decision would be to choose to become aware of the issues facing our great land and to serve, in whatever capacity we can, to solve them.

It should be an honor to serve out country, but any death in a war is a tragedy.

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
- William Shakespeare

Memorial Day 2016

Let me first say that I didn’t know the man. In fact, my only experience involving him was casual and accidental, although our ages were only two years apart. Our lives were different though. Mine has been long and lucky. His was short and tragic.

His name was Perry Lee Poole and he was a Lance Corporal in the United States Marines, First Platoon, G Company of the Second Battalion, First Marines. He was born on January 05, 1945 and died on October 16, 1966 from small arms fire during a mission in the Quang Nam province of Vietnam on October 02, 1966. His hometown is listed as Helena, Arkansas, although I think he may have attended school elsewhere. His name exists on the wall of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington at Panel 11E, Line 80.

That’s not a lot to know about a man, is it? How did I come to know that much? A few years ago I drove my wife and mother-in-law to the small town of Marvell, Arkansas in the state’s eastern delta, not far from the Mississippi River. They were searching for the grave site of relatives and this led us to the nearby community of Cypert, and the Cypert Cemetery where they located the grave sites they sought. While they searched, I wandered, and I stumbled upon the tombstone of Perry Lee Poole.

From the designation of the USMC and his rank, along with his date of death, I had no doubt as to how he ended up at this site. It was just one of more than 50,000 such places scattered throughout America. As a veteran of that tragic chapter in American history, I could only stand in silent gratitude that I had been one of the lucky ones.

I photographed the tombstone and, after filing the photo, decided to see if I could find out anything about this man who never lived to fulfill his potential. Finding the cold facts was easy. Finding about the man was harder. It was as if history had hidden him away, from shame, or sorrow, or both.

Once, I did find comments from a childhood friend left on a website for fallen veterans. It seems that Perry Lee might have been the very model of a young man growing up in rural Arkansas: loving the outdoors, loving his country, and believing the glory of war. He lived to fish and hunt according to his friend who recounted how it wasn’t unusual for Perry Lee to appear before sunrise to plot an adventure.

His friend also recounted sadder times. From the letters Perry Lee wrote from Vietnam, we learn that he had been wounded, sent to the Philippines to recover, and returned to service. His last letter stated a poignant reality, “War is not like they show it in the movies.”

Why does the fate of this man and the scant bit of information about him intrigue me so much? I don’t know, but I think it lies in the knowledge that he may have been as accurate a depiction of a type of young man coming of age during those trying times as one might find. Also, it serves us as a reminder of the real cruelty of war. Perhaps it might convince some of us that we should have no more of them. Somehow, I think Perry Lee would have agreed.

See also:

www.wattensawpress.com

www.travelswithanalien.blogspot.com