Memorial Day 2006

I only set out to get a cup of coffee at the nearest 7-Eleven this Memorial Day morning. My usual routine. Nothing special about the day for me. Too many dead from wars for me to acknowledge this day set aside for the dead soldiers of the American wars.
Of course my choice of bringing Hubert Laws’ cd that included his version of “Amazing Grace” probably wasn’t an accident. Some say there are no such things as accidents. I’m not that certain but I do believe we have unconscious moments of doing things for certain reasons.
As the flute of Hubert Laws started with the song, my emotions got the better of me. This was the same song, same version I had played at the site where we’d taken the ashes of both my parents in the mountains of Colorado.
How many years it’s been since I’ve had parents alive. It seems forever.
I heard a friend talk to her parents this morning and was envious. I realized I miss those conversations with my mom. I miss those times working together with my dad.
Then, my mind went to Vietnam. As it always does. Ft. Logan National Cemetery is less than two miles from the 7-Eleven. I drove my car in that direction. “Amazing Grace” continued to play loudly in my car. Three military jets made a low flyover at the moment I reached the top of the hill overlooking Bear Valley and the cemetery below.
My mind went back to low flying jets dropping napalm bombs that tumbled into tree lines in 1968. The trees erupted into huge columns of flame and thick black smoke. Later, the next day I’d walk through the village next to the tree line.
I’ve told this story thousands of times now and somehow it never gets old and never changes. It’s always the same result. Children charred beyond recognition. Body parts in trees burned black. Blackened areas on the ground where the thatch homes of peasants once housed families.
These are scenes that never leave the mind or the conscience of combat participants. What purpose did we achieve with the horrifying deaths of those children? What honor is there to say I walked through a village of peasants destroyed by an awful weapon of war?
I see the American flag and the red reminds me of blood but not an honorable spilling of blood for higher causes. Just the unnecessary blood spilled of sons and daughters of America and all the nations still unable to refrain from barbaric solutions to differences.
I saw a bumper sticker two or three days ago that read “I’m proud to be an American”. My wife can testify to the anger these words elicited from me. I can’t be proud to be an American. I love this country but I’m not proud of it. It has such potential for good but continues to offset that good with murderous wars perpetrated by callous and uncaring humans.
Memorial Day. Like the 4th of July, I hate the holiday. I’m so very tired of being reminded of the dead from wars of America. I’m tired of pretending we live in a democracy that’s home of the brave and land of the free. All I have to do is go to the nearest city or county jail and ask the inmates why they’re incarcerated. All I have to do is look at their color.
Or I can go next door and find immigrants that have come here to work but don’t have the documents they’re supposed to have. Ilegals. I can’t find the words to describe the revulsion I feel to know my country labels humans as illegal.
I can’t find words to describe my anger seeing young men and women imprisoned for the horror of addictions. Poor and oppressed young people imprisoned for possession of a substance used to numb themselves to the injustices they face.
I guess the addictions of my two sons may be a reason it hurts me so much. I know the pain behind the numbing of the body and soul to the depression of life in a country that fails so many people.
I arrived at a turn off near the fence of the cemetery. The flute of Hubert Laws still played the haunting song of redemption. Will I find amazing grace to save a fool like me? I never feel like I will. I can only think of those days of napalm and firefights.
There’s a line in the movie “Apocalypse Now” when a character says, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning”. It captures the mindset of what it takes to be in combat. You have to give up all the moral values learned as a child. Reality comes quick and with such force it leaves you sobbing and gasping. It takes away part of the soul.
I looked across the rows of the headstones in the cemetery and thought of the young men I saw killed or never saw die after they left with horrible wounds. I recalled the death of my company commander and the tears of embittered and hardened combat veterans. I remembered my friend, Joey, who went to North with me.
The song ended and I pushed a button to play it again. My tears became sobs. I can’t let go of the thought there seems to be no end to this insanity.
Two months ago I spent five days with veterans, family members of children in war, family members who had children killed in our wars and survivors of Hurricane Katrina abandoned by my country.
I heard so many stories that seemed to be the same story that’s been running in my head for thirty eight years. Same story, different characters, different places, different weapons. Same result.
The past week has been filled with information of Marines brutally killing innocent civilians in retaliation for the death of one of their comrades. People around the world are outraged. American people deny this is what normally happens in wars. We’re the “good guys”.
By now the photos of dead children have lost their impact on me. There’s so many it’s difficult to sort each individual out and think of them as the child of a grieving family.
I see a race horse break its leg in a rich man’s sport and I can’t get the image out of my head for days. What the fuck’s wrong with me?
What the fuck’s wrong with this country? We keep coming back to the cemeteries time after time with our tears and our thoughts of despair but we don’t stop the madness.
We put flowers on the graves and tidy up the plot of loved ones but do little or nothing to stop the killing of babies. Genocide, homicide, suicide, matricide, patricide….what the fuck is going on in this world that we can’t stop killing?
Willie Dixon had a song with the lyric,” it don’t make sense we can’t find peace”. He sang about all the potential and many achievements of humans but couldn’t understand why we can’t find peace.
For mothers and fathers with dead children every day is Memorial Day. For children seeing parents brutally killed by bombs bursting in air, each day is a day of remembering. For soldiers and Marines left to live, the memories of death and violence never leave. They remember far too well what they are responsible for doing or not doing.
We don’t need days of memories followed by days of continued death and destruction anymore. We never needed them.
We need to stop having children killing children. We need to spare parents staying up late at night dreading phone calls or knocks on doors. We need to quit numbing our minds to the photos of dead babies.
The song goes, “I once was lost, but now am found;Was blind, but now I see..” What amazing grace it would be for us to finally see


Terry Leichner
Denver, CO