Memorial Day

My mother and father were WWII veterans. He was a tank commander in Europe and she served in the Coast Guard. They are buried at the Willamette National Cemetery in Portland, Oregon. They rest high on a grass hill, not far from the shade of an oak tree. Their head stones lay flat in rows, along with over 150,000 other veterans, dating back to the Spanish American War. I have imagined these markers as part of a long winding path, leading to somewhere.

When I was an 18 year old Marine in the jungles of Vietnam, I never considered Memorial Day. I thought about staying alive, and worried I'd get shot in the face. I dreamed of my pregnant girlfriend back home; the softness of her skin, her touch and where we parked at night, with other young lovers. I never imagined the meaning of Memorial Day. Now I think of blue eyed Gurny, catching a round in the throat and how it felt carrying him on a pole like an animal, swinging dead.  Or Jack, the dog handler, being cut down in the rice paddies and Jimmy as he died, shot again as we loaded him on to the chopper.  I never thought of any of them on Memorial Day in 1969, when making it until tomorrow was all consuming.

But as the years advance the meaning of Memorial Day becomes more important. Those boys, who perished, are back with me again. I can see them climbing through the vines and tangles when I walk alone along a wooded trail. I can remember them alive, especially around Memorial Day. I'm a beat up old vet with bad knees and a puny back that still has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Just like my dad but he didn’t know it. Oh, it’s better now, this PTSD stuff. At least it’s different. It’s easier than my younger years, when I was wild and strong and used to knock guys out in bars and punch out picture windows.  I was full of rage. My college was the jungle and firefights were part of my fraternity. When I came home, I missed my rifle and wanted to shoot somebody. 

My wife helped save me. She listened to me with compassion and understanding and forced me to repair. I have done years of therapy, take medication and have been on many silent, meditation retreats for veterans.

I had lunch the other day with my Lieutenant from Vietnam and my best therapist, Dr. Barry Jones. The first day I met my L-T was when I was choppered into the bush in the summer of 68.  By then Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were dead and antiwar demonstrations were raging. Strapped with a .45, LT seemed bigger back then. His uniform was worn and his face had a look of wisdom and fatigue that only soldiers know.

As we sat down for lunch he handed me a small white piece of paper pulled from his wallet. There were nine names written in red ink. “Do you know any of these Marines, he asked me, hopefully?” “They were the young men who died under my command.”  I looked hard at the paper. I wanted to reach back in time and tell him yes. Yes! I called this guy Pig Pen. He carried the machine gun and ammo with Tiny. Remember Tiny? He was so damn big. And I’m sure this guy was Cesar, from the Bronx. You know, the goofy looking kid who was always scratching and scrounging for peaches and pound cake.  I wanted to say something to help make them alive again. But I shook my head no. “I’m sorry LT. They must have been killed before I came.”

We chatted awhile mostly about wives and football and soon the bloodshed we once shared. Barry, who doesn’t see me professionally anymore, is now a friend. Like LT, he too was a Marine officer in Vietnam.  We’ve known each other for the past twenty years. He has participated in some of my wife’s ideas for healing me and other vets. He brought up the sweat lodge she put together, to help me prepare for going back to Vietnam in 1993 on a mission of mercy. Her idea was to replace my memories of carrying a machine gun with ones of carrying medical supplies and toys.

We sat shirtless in a circle in the sweat lodge with hot rocks in the center. The canvas ceiling was close to the ground.  All of us were soldiers once, with shrapnel wounds and gunshot wounds, now scared over. The gathering was led by Oyati, a Native American and Vietnam veteran. He poured water on the rocks and spoke about the spirits of our brothers. In the faint light I could see the war etched in their faces and like me, it seemed deep in their souls.

“I was the last one out of the sweat lodge,” Barry said. “ It was dark and so hot. I was thirsty and dehydrated then a flash back came to me. I was back in Vietnam with my squad. We were firing as my squad moved into a tree line. I was shot by a sniper, hiding in a tree. I was knocked to the ground and when I looked up I could see him. I saw his face and then I killed him. And for the first time, sitting in that lodge, I asked him to forgive me.”

A scrap of paper, a few names, a soldier’s vision. It’s Memorial Day.  At the cemetery, Boy Scouts will have placed flags on each resting place. The National Guard will fire two cannons, three times and a small band will play…

Jack Estes is the author of the critically acclaimed Vietnam Memoir, “A Field of Innocence.” He can be reached throughJackestes@comcast.net.  More about the author and his book can be found at Jack Estes.