Miscellany in Memoriam

As perhaps should be the case, but usually isn't, this Memorial Day gave me cause to reflect on the war. Between the two of us, Dave and I have no war dead in our families, at least none that we know of. Although several relatives did serve, including my Dad who was drafted when he took a semester off of college to work and spent his time manning a radio relay station in Italy and taking full note of the bureaucratic idiocies of the Army, all did so in that sort of work-a-day way that kept them out of active combat.

So it is perhaps easy for me to say that this current war of choice is an affront to the memories of the soldiers who have died. Meaninglessness. Death for rhetoric, power, and avarice. But what a horrible thing to think, much less say, especially because I really believe it to be true. Truth notwithstanding, could I say this to the mother of a soldier who died?

Last night as we were walking to the store, we passed an elderly woman who had collapsed on the ground, perhaps from drink, perhaps from health problems, who knows. A man taking photographs of the Jesus Christ, King of Kings, Lord of Lords statue at St. Stephen's Catholic Church had already called 911, but we waited with him and with our incoherent her because, were it Dave or I passed out there, we would want someone to wait with us until help had arrived. The LAPD/LAFD is not to quick to reply to calls about a downed woman who is still breathing and seemingly sleeping quite peacefully in the grass, so we talked for about 30 minutes with our new-found photographer friend. A Jewish social worker and professional photographer originally from upstate New York, Ben told us that he had enlisted to serve in the Air Force during Vietnam. He ran a fueling station in the Southern part of the country, a relatively peaceful post in a time of guerilla warfare. He shared with us a lot of interesting perspectives that only an older, wiser man looking back on his younger self could know. His call to duty was especially strong, having grown up around Air Force bases his entire life. Even more powerful a motivating force was the fact that his father had not fought in WWII; he felt he had to fight for the both of them (although he later found out that his father had been integral to the production of airplanes for the war and was commended for his; with that realization came an awareness of how misguided his boyish attempts to put himself in danger to prove the bravery and integrity of both he and his father had been). And when he returned to the States to hear John Kerry protesting and testifying before Congress, he thought him a traitor for having spoken out. Yet now, he said, he realized that Kerry had been right.

The ambulance finally arrived and we all went on about our business.

I want to hold this Memorial Day memory, though, to look back on it and this war when I am older and wiser, when hopefully history is older and wiser, too.