Reflections
I wrote this originally back in 2006. However, for some reason it has invaded my thoughts heavily in the past several days. I went back and re-read it and thought I would re-share it. May we never forget those who answered the call of their country and the soldiers and their families that have
Monuments. What are they and why are we drawn to them? Why must we observe the monuments of yesterday, if not to learn
for tomorrow? I love history, and the study of it. One person even said that those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it's failures. So monuments provide for those of us today, a marker for yesterday’s successes and failures.
For 10 years, we lived in the Washington D.C area. Having done my undergraduate work in History, the D.C area was the first place I lived as an adult that was truly “historical.” Sure, Mobile and Huntsville, Alabama both have local history and some national significance if you dig enough. But, Washington D.C, the place where our burgeoning nation would teethe on the concept of “government for the people, by the people,” was a hotbed of history. I remember the first time I drove into the city and was confronted with the sight of our Nation’s capital building, standing majestically against the skyline. It was almost indescribable to finally behold with my own eyes that which I had read so much about before.
Invariably, any visitor to the capital city will have certain sights etched in their memories. Maybe it’s the National Archives which contains the Declaration of Independence witnessed by 56 men brave men who challenged the world’s strongest empire when they affixed their names to the treatise that would proclaim “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Perhaps it is the Lincoln Memorial, where the man who spoke over the site of one of America’s greatest battlefields that “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract" sits in granite immortalized.
For me, the most visually moving monument is the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. I visited it once alone, a private journey.
On a fall day, many years later (probably around 1991), I would go with my parents and sister to that hallowed monument.
Once criticized for its simplicity, no other monument ever had the dramatic effect on me that this one offered. I have walked Gettysburg and Appomattox. I have seen the remains of Hitler’s power in Germany. I have stood on soil where Americans have bled and died. Yet, somehow, this haunting memorial to 58,245 of America’s sons deeply moved me.
As moving as the monument was when I saw it alone, I was not prepared for the reaction my father would have at the Wall.
My father was a private person. He was of the breed that kept his emotions in check. That is not to say he never was upset or happy. He just never allowed others to see his emotions too deeply. He confronted the world with a sarcastic wit and was always ready to smile at himself and others. He served his nation proudly for over 20 years, going to defend the Republic of South Vietnam two times as a member of the 5th Special Forces Group Project Delta. He served in what has been described by one source as the most successful Special Operations unit in the Vietnam theater of war.
Touring the Wall, a different side of my father was revealed. Together, we walked the path beside the panels that reflect the names. We stood together at the books that document the names on the wall. My father would recall a name, I would look it up. Each time I found a name and pointed it out, I could see him reflect on the memories of his brother in arms. When we didn’t find a name, he would nod his head, as if to say “he came home.”
My sister and I would talk later in the day about the reaction of my father at the Memorial. Dad was different that day. The crusty veneer that he presented to the world was cracked.
I still struggle with what I saw that day. I did not see the man my father had always appeared to be. I saw a man that felt the burden of seeing so many of his friends names' inscribed in the granite walls, brothers that saw their days end in a land far from home.
There are many that may say that America had no right to be there, and the war was wrong. I will not argue the politics, but, the fact that American men bled and died there is not changed. Whether the government was right in sending them, these men -- these soldiers, adhered to the oath they took upon entering the service of their country. Theirs was not the argument of right or wrong, but of doing what those duly elected to office over them had ordered them to do. They answered the call of their country, and some paid the ultimate price for their loyalty.
