Robert Simpson: In honored memory

The flag dominated the scene in the bright sunshine of Memorial Day. I had run it to the top of the 20-foot flagpole in my front yard, then lowered it slowly to half-staff, where it would remain until noon and then be hauled to the top for the rest of the day. When I first installed the flagpole many years ago, I flew the flag from it every day, weather permitting. Conflicting commitments and other matters have increasingly interfered, so now I display the flag only on special days. Memorial Day heads that category.

I chose to do things differently to recognize the day this year. I decided I would stop grumbling about how we do commerce and fun on a day designated for more somber and significant purposes. I decided I’d not complain that we, with the best of intentions, have diluted the day set aside to honor our war dead by using it to thank all veterans and those now serving in uniform. And I decided I would mark the day in my own private way.

I attended no ceremonies. I spent the day at home, alone. Well, there was one dog with me. And the flag. But it was a quiet and peaceful day. When I had a young family, we sometimes did fun things on Memorial Day, but that was a long time ago, so it’s not as if spending the day now mostly in silence was any kind of unfamiliar burden.

It gave me the opportunity to think. Not just in general terms about sacrifice of life, devotion to duty, debts of gratitude, stuff like that, but specifically about the individual humans, roughly 1,264,150 of them, whose lives have been snuffed out in the wars this country has fought during its existence.

It’s hard to think of this huge number as individual persons. But I could think about and remember the faces, gestures, voices of some whom I had reason to remember well, figures from World War II forward. So I did. I made a list of names and related information. Eighteen names.

Robert died at Anzio. James died in France. Morris, a classmate for whom a Fort Benning school is named, died in Vietnam, as did a platoon sergeant from whom I’d learned a lot in my first years in the Army. Dick, a friend during my days in Korea, died in Vietnam, as did three Fort Benning classmates, one of whom had shared a house with me.

Two young soldiers mistakenly drove into the rebel zone in Santo Domingo during the revolution there and were ambushed and shot to death. The two bodies were retrieved and brought back to my unit. I never saw their faces, only their boots on dead feet sticking out of the back of the litter Jeep as it halted at the aid station. I have never forgotten them.

A young but mature lieutenant in the Dominican Republic impressed me with his ability. He was married and had four children. He was later killed in Vietnam. As was another, much less experienced lieutenant, one I once chastised severely and, I realized later, unfairly. I list that mistake as a separate, unredeemable debt to add to the overwhelming one I owe him for his life. As I owe the chaplain who became my favorite conversationalist late at night when we would sit out in the Dominican dark to catch a breeze if possible, and to talk about everything. Later he would lose his life, also in Vietnam, leaving a large family.

Ambushed in Vietnam was a well-known West Point athlete I’d known in my early days. Among the many killed in a lengthy battle were two young Infantry riflemen who by proximity I’d gotten to know better than most. An excellent young sergeant, killed in an ambush in the infamous Mangyang Pass, where so many Frenchmen of Mobile Group 100 had lost their lives in France’s last major battle of their own Vietnam war. A general officer whom I met only once but who was impressive, competent, possessing a great future until on a night of driving rain his helicopter smashed into the side of a mountain in Vietnam. There were many others I knew less well, but these eighteen are etched in my memory, so they were my list.

I spent some time remembering each and the contact I’d had with them. I said a prayer of thanks for their sacrifice for all of us. A prayer was a tiny gesture of small value compared to the enormous price they paid, but I thought it was maybe a step in the right direction.

Eighteen souls, the oldest forty-eight, the youngest perhaps nineteen. A tiny fraction of all the dead we honor. Eighteen lives violently destroyed, blasting apart whole families, leaving searing pain that is overwhelming and will not end. Remembering them as individuals and saying a prayer was the least I could do. But not enough. There can never be enough.

This story was originally published June 4, 2016 at 6:38 PM with the headline "Robert Simpson: In honored memory."