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.

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 Five (Cont._2)

Payday came again and I had a little extra money with which to live. I wasn’t in tall cotton, but I wasn’t depleting savings anymore. My brother had decided to play the unemployment insurance game, so he came up on occasion and we drank beer and swapped stories about military life, although his had lasted a mere six months or so.

As it had turned out, he learned, after completing Marine Corps boot camp, that something in the leather of combat boots caused in him a rather severe skin reaction. He had finished radioman school and, I found out later, learned that his next orders would be to “WESTPAC.” That meant Vietnam. After repeated hospital stays for serious skin reactions, the Marine Corps decided that a trooper who couldn’t wear combat boots had little utility as cannon fodder. They gave him an Honorable Discharge and sent him home.

Perhaps there’s a name missing on “The Wall.” Who knows?

At work, we were completing the projects in somewhat orderly fashion now, and so far without a major mistake. Tensions eased, and the atmosphere became quite pleasant. We would work until five o’clock, whereupon everyone would go home for supper. Around 7:00 p.m. we would reassemble at the office and put in a couple of more hours.

It was about that time that I discovered “happy hour.”

No, it didn’t involve libations. But, it did involve popcorn. Back then, there were three “first-run” theaters in downtown Little Rock. The Arkansas was directly behind and to the south of our office building. The Center sat a ways up on Main Street. The Capitol was near the corner of Capitol and Broadway, on my way home. All showed newly released movies.

At a little after five o’clock, the theaters all presented “happy hour” shows for a dollar. When new films arrived, I would often take “supper” at one and enjoy a box of popcorn, a coke, and a movie before going back to work. Since the others didn’t see me leave, nor did they see me return, what business of mine was it if they may have assumed that I had worked through the “supper break?”

Very often, as I was beginning to find out about the world of business, it is useful to dole out information as an investment rather than as idle chatter provided with no intention of return. Thus, the massive redaction due this humble narrative of one young man’s battle with the vicissitudes of life.

My legend grew, and for the next two years, and for the only time in my life, I had seen every American film considered for Oscar nominations.

I still had no social acquaintances in Little Rock, only work and a little cheap entertainment. We generally worked half a day on Saturday and I would drive home to see the family. It was beginning to seem to me that success was an easy thing if you had nothing else to do.

As I say, I had no contacts in the city. That was about to change.

Is there a  hint of
the devious lurking
behind that smile?

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

Back Doors

Early morning thoughts: While standing “Quarterdeck Duty” once on a Navy base, I was told to deliver a message to the Admiral’s home. I carried out my mission smartly, but was told by the butler, “Next time, you are to use the back door.” It wasn’t a big deal, but it did mark the first time that I, a Caucasian male of European descent, had ever been told to use anyone’s back door. Walking back, I remember thinking, “What if it wasn’t the Admiral’s house and I wasn’t in the military? What if every day of my life, my father’s life, and my grandfather’s life, my people had been told to use the back door? How would that have shaped my life? How would my father have felt at the end of a day of denigration, humiliation, and back doors when he came home to assume his part in the rearing of his children?

At the time this happened, the military had its doors open for people of all colors. If one didn’t enter willingly, the draft was applied without regard to race, creed or color. So a man forced into war against his will, who served his country, perhaps being damaged in process, was still relegated to back doors at the end of his service if he didn’t fit our standards of racial purity. This means that there are more than 7,400 names of men on the Vietnam Memorial who would not have been allowed to live in many cities of the American South had they survived the war. These are names of men whose parents would have been denied service in many restaurants on the day of their son’s death, a denial supported and defended by “strong religious beliefs.” A life of back doors still awaited those mourning families.

How dedicated would I have been in service to my country if that end result awaited me?

A few short years later, the owner of an apartment building would say to me when I called to inquire about a rental, “You’ll have to come by in person so I can check the color of your eyes.” I declined and thought again of that night I walked back to the headquarters building from the Admiral’s house.

 It made an impression on me and I still wonder how many Americans survived our country’s wars only to be denied a home in which they could rest and recover, or the right to marry the person they loved, or the privilege of living free of another person’s religious dogma. That is why I’m appalled that some elected leaders–not many, but enough to terrorize the rest—would have us return any of our precious brothers and sister to those awful “back door” days.
 

Let us mourn for those who died without ever
 gaining the full rights of American Citizenship.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also:

www.wattensawpress.com

www.travelswithanalien.blogspot.com