May they rest in peace.

Rest in Peace
By Joseph Walther


Memorial Day weekend rolls around every year right on schedule. For many in this country, it represents a 3-day weekend. Heaps of people travel to a beach; lots of others stay home and celebrate with cookouts and parades. And, for many others—police, fire, hospital, and other emergency service folks—it’s just another working day. Oh, and lest we forget, if you are a retailer or one who works in retail sales, Memorial Day is a major “sales” opportunity.

Memorial Day is something else, too. It is the one day each year that we’ve set aside to REMEMBER all of those who have died defending our way of life. There is no need for a collective obsession over it. We can all still have fun with the festivities. It’s just that each of us should pause for a moment or two of reflection. Even more important, is the need for us older folks to make sure that our children know what it’s all about.

Combat veterans never forget. We don’t need a Memorial Day because there isn’t a day in our lives that we do not remember, at least once, those with whom we served. Even though Congress never officially declared it so, my WAR was Vietnam. I am one of the many lucky ones who made it out alive and with all of my original parts in good working order.

To millions of people alive today, the many names etched into the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, DC are statistics. For me, however, five of those statistics have names and faces.

One of those statistics died in my arms on a God-forsaken jungle floor. He was just 19-years old. That was over 38-years ago, but I still bolt upright in the night, from time-to-time. I can see his face and feel him die as vividly as I did then. My forehead is sweating. My heart is pounding at a deafening internal decibel level and I can feel the moistness and stickiness of his blood on my arms and combat fatigues. I swear that I can even smell the cordite still hanging in the air from the explosion that ripped his abdomen open. Combat veterans NEVER forget.

I need to stop here because I don’t want to turn this into a political tirade against what seems to have been going on in this country ever since Vietnam. Let’s just remember all of those who have died in service to country. If you have a relationship with God, make contact now and ask Him to look after all of their devastated families and friends.

Let me leave you with this quoted passage. It belongs to the late Major Michael Davis O’Donnell. I met him when he was Captain O’Donnell. He died in combat on January 1, 1970.

"If you are able, save for them a place inside of you and save one backward glance when you are leaving for the places they can no longer go.

Be not ashamed to say you loved them, though you may or may not have always. Take what they have taught you with their dying and keep it with your own.

And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind."

Have a great holiday. I’ll be back again next week as my usual smart-assed self, political tirades included.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send your comments. Just click here.