In Memoriam

[Planet Waves Moderator]

I can't think of a topic as fraught with fear, loathing, pathos, and complexity as war and death; and today we mark that day ... no wonder we run screaming toward picnic tables and the sounds of children playing ... and in these tense years, it's no wonder we "honor" as an afterthought to a long weekend away from rhetoric and war drums.

Below, you'll find the best reads of the day -- each has a little piece of the war/death puzzle, and each offers it up for our Heart to feel ... yes, feel.  Unless we embrace what it worst, we will not insist on what is best.  Unless we grow THROUGH the pain, and let it pass through us, we will spin in it.

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers
but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain
but for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not look to allies in life's battlefield
but to my own strength.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved
But hope for patience to win my freedom
~ Tagore

Jude


"My Soldiers, My Veterans"
John Nichols
05/28/2006
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=87349

The wisdom of wars can be debated on any day, and this column has not hesitated to question the thinking -- or, to be more precise, the lack of thinking -- that has led the United States to the current quagmire in Iraq.

But on Memorial Day, it is well to pause from the debate to remember those whose lives have been lost, not merely to the fool's mission of the contemporary moment but to all those battles – noble and ignoble – that have claimed the sons and daughters of this and every land.

After the bloodiest and most divisive of America's wars, the poet Walt Whitman offered a dirge for two soldiers of the opposing armies -- Civil War veterans, buried side by side. His poem is an apt reminder that, when the fighting is done, those who warred against one another often find themselves in the same place. It is appropriate that we should garland each grave, understanding on this day above all others that wars are conceived by presidents and prime ministers, not soldiers.

It is appropriate, as well, and perhaps a bit soothing, to recall Whitman's wise words:

The last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,
Down a new-made double grave.
.
Lo, the moon ascending,
Up from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense and silent moon.
.
I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they are flooding,
As with voices and with tears.
.
I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring
And every blow of the great convulsive drums,
Strikes me through and through.
.
For the son is brought with the father,
(In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans son and father dropt together,
And the double grave awaits them.)
.
And nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.
.
In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin'd,
('Tis some mother's large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing.)
.
O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.
.
The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love. ++


Where is the Shared Hope of Our Old Memorial Days?
At post-WWII parades, even kids seemed to sense the relief that the war was over.
Susan Lenfestey
Monday, May 29, 2006 by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (Minnesota)
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0529-24.htm

In May I hear drums, or I think I do. The rhythmic rat-a-tat of my neighbor's roof project, the deep thrum of the subwoofers on the low-rider idling ahead of me, the sharp staccato burst of the pileated woodpecker in the newly lush canopy outside my window -- all take me back to the sounds of the Memorial Day of my childhood.

It's conditioning I suppose, part of being, well, a boomer -- the generation that grew up in the patriotic aftermath of World War II, when Memorial Day packed almost as much of a wallop as Christmas.

With time unwinding slowly off the spool back then, as it does for children, I didn't realize how fresh the war still was for the grown-ups around me. For children it was all sensory pleasure, the sounds and smells of summer, and a parade to kick it all off.

The night before Memorial Day my mother would go through the big storage chest and pull out summer clothes steeped in the scent of mothballs. My older sisters would retreat to their rooms to devise their patriotic flair in private, but I was happy with a pair of blue boxer-boy shorts and a T-shirt, white with broad red bands. We all knew that to be seen at the Memorial Day parade in anything other than red, white and blue would be almost as humiliating as showing up in nothing at all.

We got up early -- and on the real Memorial Day, none of this "closest Monday" bunk back then -- to decorate our bikes with streamers of crepe paper woven through the spokes and little flags taped to the handlebars.

While my family took forever eating breakfast, I'd be outside, riding up and down the little concrete apron sloping from the garage, admiring the flutter of my streamers, and that's when I'd hear the drums in the distance -- a thrilling ghostly sound, yet reassuring in its familiarity -- and race in to tell everyone that the parade was about to start.

Even though we decorated our bikes, we only rode to the parade, not in it. That was reserved for people in uniform, and there were lots of them in 1950, including Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, white-gloved hands awkwardly clasped around flagpoles secured hard against the belly. Each year some flush-faced Scout would invariably go all wobbly in the heat, just at the crest of the hill before it spilled out onto the village green.

This parade wasn't about floats, with mermaids waving from tissue-paper coral, or animated bears toting oversized balloons. It wasn't about fun, and yet it was fun to watch the rows and rows of men and women pass in front of us, jaws jutting, arms swinging in unison, the marching orders called out in sing-song cadences like jump-rope rhymes.

The bands and drum corps moved in step as well -- gleaming tubas that could swallow you up and trumpets played by men with veins bulging in their necks like pipe-cleaners, and those booming drums underlying the rat-a-tat ones, jiggling our stomachs as we clutched our ears.
In the village green the speeches droned on in front of the war memorial -- a massive block of stone etched with hundreds of names and anchored to its plinth by four oversized bronze eagles -- the monotony broken by a 21-gun salute and maybe a trio of low-flying jets.

As names were read and shiny magnolia-leaf wreaths placed at the foot of the monument, the grown-ups dabbed at their eyes, because even in my affluent Chicago suburb there had been shared sacrifice and enormous loss. So the secure happiness we children felt must have stemmed from something else, something we sensed beneath the sorrow -- perhaps relief that the war was over and hard-earned confidence in the future.

This Memorial Day I miss the fanfare and the drums, but most of all I miss the shared relief of a difficult chapter ending and the shared hope for a brighter one ahead. And I wonder, how do we honor our dead when we are asked not to notice?  ++


Honor the Fallen, Not the War
James Carroll
Monday, May 29, 2006 by the Boston Globe
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0529-25.htm

 

Today's observance has its origins in the laudable impulse to memorialize those who died in the nation's wars. Because that impulse is tied to grief, however, the remembering is narrow. Its object is ``honor" and so the past is glorified, as the graves of the fallen are decorated on Decoration Day. Because it is natural to regard those who died in war as heroes, it can seem necessary to affirm the wars themselves as heroic, too. The decoration extends to martial rhetoric. This is a human response, dating at least to Homer, but such remembering results, ironically, in a kind of amnesia. The true condition of war -- what continually leaves battle-scarred survivors opposed to war -- is readily forgotten.

In the 20th century, two occurrences initiated a broad change in consciousness. Industrialized war so devastated the populations of the battle zones that they found it impossible to resume the ancient habit of glorification. The past would be remembered differently.

Germany and Japan, in particular, emerged as pacifist nations -- an extraordinary turn. But, secondly, when nuclear weapons entered the story, the future was transformed, too. Traditional notions of proportionality and civilian immunity were obliterated. For the first time, large numbers of humans began to insist that a world without war was not only possible but mandatory. The most respectful way to memorialize the war dead was to deny that they had to be succeeded.

But during the Cold War this discussion became framed as debate between tough-minded ``realists" and soft-headed idealists. Across a generation, the realists seemed to have the better of the argument, but when that era of jeopardy ended non violently, it was the idealists (the democracy movements in the East, the peace movements in the West) who turned out to have perceived what was truly real. The national security establishments on both sides of the Iron Curtain, presiding jointly over the manufacture of more than 100,000 nukes -- to cite only their most egregious mistake -- had fatally undermined the very notion of security. That the world survived that mad competition had nothing to do with what realists perceived or proposed.

Lately, in Washington, they have been at it again, insisting that new threats (if not communists, terrorists; if not dominoes, oil) justify going to war. But once more, the true face of war has efficiently shown itself. The true meaning of national security is apparent, too. Confronted with challenges from malevolent antagonists, the realists had wildly exaggerated what such enemies were capable of. Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden posed real dangers, but not remotely what realists warned of, and not what they then went after. The realists, that is, missed what was real. With their war in Iraq, in the context of their global war on terrorism, they created new conditions of national insecurity that surpass any damage of which Saddam or bin Laden were capable. An Arab world enflamed against America. Muslims seeing in us a mortal enemy. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict escalated. Other nations (not only Iran and North Korea, but perhaps Russia and China) girding for battle against us. On the ground in Iraq, the full meaning of such consequences is blood red -- Iraqi blood, American blood. As always, the first penalty for the failures of such realism is paid by the dead.

This Memorial Day, especially, we yearn to honor the more than 2,700 US soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. What is the proper way to remember them? Even in condemning what made it necessary, can we not acknowledge the selflessness of their sacrifice? At Troy, soldiers were roused to battle by the promise that their exploits would be sung of far into the future. Is it a betrayal of our soldiers that we no longer want to sing? Does it mean they died ``in vain" if we insist that no one else should die?

Perhaps on Memorial Day we can also remember alternative hopes. Not soft-headedness, but tough-minded measures required to build a different world.

What if we invested as much in preventing war as in the fighting of it? (What, say, would the Middle East be if the billions spent in Iraq had funded instead a new Palestinian economy?)

Changes in the way we memorialize the past make possible changes in the way we envision the future. But here, too, it is the sacrifice of soldiers that makes possible such change. Indeed, it begins with them. The fallen heroes remind us with their lives that war must stop. ++


Memorial Day - What Is This Special Day?
Fernando Suarez del Solar
Sunday 28 May 2006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052806Y.shtml

    According to tradition, it is a day to remember those who have fallen in US wars. The stated goals of those wars were peace, freedom, democracy, and justice. But what has really happened? In spite of all of the wars that have taken thousands of our soldiers and millions of innocents, especially children, the world is still at war, and people everywhere suffer under unjust political systems where there is no freedom.
 
   Why has all of this blood been spilled? To show us that war is not the way to the noble ideals for which many have died. Today in Iraq, more than 2300 young men and women from the US have died, as have thousands of innocent Iraqis. How many more must die?

    On this day, I invite you to reflect on how to honor those lost souls by working through non-violence for real peace and justice.

    How ironic that thousands of Latino and Latina soldiers and marines have died in the name of the stars and stripes, and today the government represented by that flag offends Latinos in the United States by militarizing the border and passing discriminatory laws. Are we to ignore the contributions made by immigrants to this great nation?

    On any of the many war monuments to past wars we can find hundreds if not thousands of Latino names. Each served with pride and each was praised by politicians at the time. But what is happening now? Not only are they dishonored, but abusive and immoral proposals for immigration reform insult their relatives and families.

   On this day, to recall the thousands of lost lives is to remind ourselves that wars only produce more hate, more destruction, more injustice, more grieving families, and more rage. This cycle must be stopped by acts of peace. No more names of the dead on monuments, no more holidays to honor the fallen, no more wars that incite the hatred of other peoples and religions. We ought to abolish Memorial Day.

 Until then, let us use this day of remembrance and sadness to begin a new culture that respects human rights and all life. Let us tell Bush and those who will come after him that wars are not a path to peace. In honor of our fallen soldiers, let us raise our voice as one to say "Enough!"

    Memorial Day - a day of mourning, tears, and reflection. ++

The author, Fernando Suarez del Solar, is the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Jesus A. Suarez del Solar, killed in action in Iraq by a US cluster bomb. Fernando Suarez del Solar is the director and founder of the Guerrero Azteca Peace Project.


Memorial Day Truth: There Is No “War on Terror”
By Pachacutec
Monday, May 29th, 2006
http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/05/29/memorial-day-truth-there-is-no-war-on-terror/

There is no "War on Terror."

There is, however, a "war" on the U. S. Constitution.

After September 11, 2001, we’ve learned that we can take a punch and move on.  We’ve faced far worse threats to our national survival in our history - the Civil War, the War of 1812, World War II to name a few - but we never abandoned our Constitution.  Until now.

Terror is an emotion.  Emotions are part of human nature and cannot be eradicated.  A "War on Terror" is therefore a war on humanity.  The Bush administration has exploited the fear and shock of a nation in the wake of a surprising and dramatic act of violence to whip national fear and paranoia into a constant boil.  Why?

The evidence suggests the whole point has been to seize power and steal money.  We are witnessing a creeping coup in the United States, the overthrow of the idea, promulgated by our founders and by writers like Tom Paine, that the "Law is King:" 

But where says some is the king of America? I’ll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.

The Bush administration has explicitly denied this, claiming unlimited executive power under the president’s war powers against civilians and citizens.  The president is not your "Commader in Chief" if you do not serve in the armed forces.  On the contrary, he works for you, and he works for your representatives in the Congress. 

There is no "War on Terror."  There is only a war on the law, a conscious destruction of the U. S. Constitution.  This is not the first time right wing interests have attempted to overthrow the U. S. government.  An attempt was thwarted during the FDR administration. Then as now, America’s greatest enemies come from among the ranks of America’s ruling master class.

Bushco has enslaved Americans into a psychological reign of "War on Terror" that amounts to a criminal protection racket.  We are told we must be afraid.  That is, we are told we must live in terror.  This is to protect us from. . . terror.  Then, because we feel terrified, we must give up our freedom - freedom to write what we believe without fear of reprisal, freedom of due process and habeas corpus protection, freedom from secret intrusion into our private lives by government.
Today is Memorial Day.  Today we remember countless patriots who died and fought for those freedoms our president tells us we must abandon. . . in the name of "freedom."

If there were really a "War on Terror," an emotion, Wes Craven would be hiring a lawyer:  he scares people.  The "War on Terror" is a sham.  You know what changed after September 11th?  We, the people of the United States, forgot how strong we are. We gave in to fear, when the only thing we should have feared was fear itself.  Osama bin Laden wants you to be afraid. 

So does George Bush.

I know I’m not alone when I say, I’m an American and I’m not afraid.  I know I’m going to die.  I accept that I’m going to die, no problem.  What I do not accept and will not accept is the notion that I must live as a slave to fear for the purposes of craven, cowardly men who, in their time, pissed the bed rather than fight an actual war, later to become powerful and use that power to line their pockets with my tax dollars. Give me liberty or give me death.  Take your "terror" and shove it.

We went after the criminals who attacked us when we invaded Afghanistan, then quickly abandoned any pretense of being concerned with actual terrorists by fighting a ginned-up war of aggression against a tin-pot dictator for whom our chickenshit president and his buddies have always had a hard-on.  If the U. S. were serious about thwarting terrorism or about minimizing our exposure to acts of violence designed to make us afraid, we would have rigorous port security and massive international goodwill and cooperation in the lawful identification of anarchic, violent networks.  But we don’t have that.  We have our sons and daughters fighting to maintain bases in the sand near oil fields, sacrificing their lives, bodies and minds for a pack of lies.

Ann Coulter and other right wing totalitarian cheerleaders like to talk about traitors to America.  George Bush and the Republicans have betrayed America, the actual laws of America and the very idea of America.  On Memorial Day, as we remember our sons and daughters who have sacrficed their lives in the blistering sands of Iraq, it does their memory due honor to point this out.  Noble men and women fallen, their blood cries out for lawful justice. 

In each of our minds lies the beginning of our return to freedom, so please, say it after me:  "There is no ‘War on Terror.’"

It’s high time for America and Americans to remember our strength.  We need not be afraid.  When we surrender to fear, we lose our country, we lose our faith in each other, we lose our future and we lose our freedom. The best way to honor the sacrfices of our nation’s men and women killed in battle is to embrace, once again, that precious liberty.

It’s time to be America again. ++


Media Memorial Day
Norman Solomon
Monday, May 29, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0529-21.htm

People who are concerned about the state of the U.S. news media in 2006 might pause on Memorial Day to consider those who have lost their lives in the midst of journalistic neglect, avoidance and bias.

We remember that while TV and radio news reports tell the latest about corporate fortunes, vast numbers of real people are struggling to make ends meet -- and many are in a position of choosing between such necessities as medicine, adequate food and paying the rent.

We remember that many Americans have lost their limbs or their lives in on-the-job accidents that might have been prevented if overall media coverage had been anywhere near as transfixed with job safety as with, say, marital splits among Hollywood celebrities.

We remember that the national and deadly problem of widespread obesity is in part attributable to constant advertising for products with empty calories and plenty of fat.

We remember that despite public claims by tobacco companies, the ads that keep trying to glamorize smoking continue to lure millions of young people onto a long journey of addiction to cancer-causing cigarettes.

We remember that superficial news reports and commentaries, routinely describing war in flat phony antiseptic terms, are helpful to the U.S. war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq -- where the deaths of American troops, while horrific, are small in number compared to the civilian deaths as a result of daily slaughter catalyzed by U.S. military activities.

We remember that each war death takes a precious life, and media outlets rarely convey more than surface accounts of the actual grief of loved ones left behind.

We remember that massive amounts of front-page space and unchallenged air time on television and radio are used by the president and other top administration officials, who speak glibly about patriotism and sacrifice while their long records of deception continue to underlie insistence that sacrificed lives must be honored by sacrificing more lives.

We remember that lies from the White House, widely parroted and commonly touted as credible by news media, have preceded every major U.S. military action in the last five decades, including invasions of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq.

We remember that after the United States led the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia for 78 days in the spring of 1999, more than a few American journalists joined with Pentagon commanders to hype the fact that no American lives were lost in combat during that time -- as if the killing of people on the ground was of scarcely any human consequence.

We remember that onslaughts of media spin followed by exuberant coverage of high-tech U.S. air attacks can shift public sentiment drastically almost overnight. That's why opponents of reckless and deadly policies should draw little comfort from the Pew Research Center's mid-May report that at the moment "the American public strongly prefers non-military approaches to dealing with Iran's nuclear technology program," with just 30 percent in favor of "bombing military targets in Iran."

We remember that, no matter how much glorious rhetoric and how many chronic euphemisms are brought to bear on public opinion, most of war's victims are not -- by any definition -- combatants or enemies. As New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, a former war correspondent, has pointed out, "In the wars of the 1990s civilian deaths constituted between 75 and 90 percent of all war deaths."

We remember that, although it received scant and fleeting U.S. media coverage when released by the Lancet medical journal in late October 2004, a study using sample-survey techniques found that about 100,000 Iraqi deaths had occurred over an 18-month period as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq -- and, according to the study's data, more than half of those who died were women and children killed in air strikes.

We remember that it's easy for hot-dogging pundits to sit in TV studios or in newsrooms to cheer on the use of cutting-edge technology by the Pentagon. Those pundits leave it to others to bury the dead and to deal with the anguish of losing relatives and friends.

We remember that standard journalism fails to do much to put us in touch with human realities of war. ++


2 in CBS News Crew Killed in Violent Day in Iraq
CHRISTINE HAUSER
May 29, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/29/world/middleeast/29cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1148961600&en=ca75a9c23048acae&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[open to read]

Dozens of people were killed in Iraq today, including two British men working for CBS News, in a string of gunfire and bomb attacks that made it one of the worst surges of violence in days.

CBS News said in a statement posted on its Web site that a crew of three embedded with the United States army's 4th Infantry Division patrolling in Baghdad came under attack this morning. The cameraman, Paul Douglas, and soundman, James Brolan, both British, were killed while the correspondent, Kimberly Dozier, an American, was critically injured...


Consider the Living
BOB HERBERT
May 29, 2006
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/05/29/opinion/29herbert.html

Pretty soon this war in Iraq will have lasted as long as our involvement in World War II, with absolutely no evidence of any sort of conclusion in sight.

The point of Memorial Day is to honor the service and the sacrifice of those who have given their lives in the nation's wars. But I suggest that we take a little time today to consider the living.

Look around and ask yourself if you believe that stability or democracy in Iraq — or whatever goal you choose to assert as the reason for this war — is worth the life of your son or your daughter, or your husband or your wife, or the co-worker who rides to the office with you in the morning, or your friendly neighbor next door.

Before you gather up the hot dogs and head out to the barbecue this afternoon, look in a mirror and ask yourself honestly if Iraq is something you would be willing to die for.

There is no shortage of weaselly politicians and misguided commentators ready to tell us that we can't leave Iraq — we just can't. Chaos will ensue. Maybe even a civil war. But what they really mean is that we can't leave as long as the war can continue to be fought by other people's children, and as long as we can continue to put this George W. Bush-inspired madness on a credit card.

Start sending the children of the well-to-do to Baghdad, and start raising taxes to pay off the many hundreds of billions that the war is costing, and watch how quickly this tragic fiasco is brought to an end.

At an embarrassing press conference last week, President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain looked for all the world like a couple of hapless schoolboys who, while playing with fire, had set off a conflagration that is still raging out of control. Their recklessness has so far cost the lives of nearly 2,500 Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, many of them children.

Among the regrets voiced by the president at the press conference was his absurd challenge to the insurgents in 2003 to "bring 'em on." But Mr. Bush gave no hint as to when the madness might end.

How many more healthy young people will we shovel into the fires of Iraq before finally deciding it's time to stop? How many dead are enough?

There is no good news coming out of Iraq. Sabrina Tavernise of The Times recently wrote: "In the latest indication of the crushing hardships weighing on the lives of Iraqis, increasing portions of the middle class seem to be doing everything they can to leave the country."

The middle class is all but panicked at the inability of the Iraqi government or American forces to quell the relentless violence. Ms. Tavernise quoted a businessman who is planning to move to Jordan: "We're like sheep at a slaughter farm."

Iraqis continue to be terrorized by kidnappers, roving death squads and, in a term perhaps coined by Mr. Bush, "suiciders."

The American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, acknowledged last week that even at this late date, there are parts of western Iraq that are not controlled by American forces, but rather "are under the control of terrorists and insurgents."

Now we get word that U.S. marines may have murdered two dozen Iraqis in cold blood last November.

No one should be surprised that such an atrocity could occur. That's what happens in war. The killing gets out of control, which is yet another reason why it's important to have mature leaders who will do everything possible to avoid war, rather than cavalierly sending the young and the healthy off to combat as if it were no more serious an enterprise than a big-time sporting event.

Nothing new came out of the Bush-Blair press conference. After more than three years these two men are as clueless as ever about what to do in Iraq. Are we doomed to follow the same pointless script for the next three years? And for three years after that?

Leadership does not get more pathetic than this. Once there was F.D.R. and Churchill. Now there's Bush and Blair.

Reacting to the allegations about the murder of civilians, the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Michael Hagee, went to Iraq last week to warn his troops about the danger of becoming "indifferent to the loss of a human life."

Somehow that message needs to be conveyed to the top leaders of this country, and to the public at large. There is no better day than Memorial Day to reflect on it. As we remember the dead, we should consider the living, and stop sending people by the thousands to pointless, unnecessary deaths. ++


The sound of thunder
Doug Thompson
May 29, 2006
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_8729.shtml

(WRITER'S NOTE: I wrote this column for Memorial Day 1998. It has been reprinted in a number of publications and is the most-requested reprint of columns I have written over the last few years. It is rerun here today as a reminder of why we celebrate Memorial Day and must work as hard as we can to avoid the horror of war.)

He snapped awake at 0500, a full 30 minutes before the alarm was set to go off.

For more than 30 years, he had been waking up at 5 a.m. It didn’t matter which time zone he was in or even if it was daylight savings time. When the big hand was on the 12 and the little one on the five, he was awake.

He crawled into the shower and lay there for 30 minutes, letting the hot water loosen up his muscles and numb the throbbing pain of too many arthritic bones.

But the water limbered him up enough to pull on some faded blue jeans, t-shirt and leather vest. It took some effort to pull on the boots, but he managed. Then he strapped on the leather chaps. Three cups of coffee and several accompanying groans later, he headed into the garage where she was waiting.

She didn’t get much use these days, but she didn’t complain. Instead, she waited patiently under the tarp, waited for Memorial Day weekend to come around, knowing he would polish her up and head out onto the open road.

He worked for the better part of two hours, polishing the chrome, checking the oil level and the tire pressures. Then he kicked loose the stand, fired her up and headed into the morning air.

Not much traffic on Arlington’s Washington Boulevard on a Sunday morning. A few cars. Some slowed to take a look at the gleaming Harley Softtail. Few noticed the gray-haired, middle-aged rider. He nosed into the parking lot of Bob & Edith’s Diner on Columbia Pike and parked besides a half-dozen other Harleys. He noticed two he expected to be here weren’t.

"Afternoon lieutenant, did we sleep in this morning?" After 30 years and they still called him by the rank they knew him by then.

"You know me chief. Just couldn’t get up."

"We weren’t sure you would make it. Heard you were hard down."

"Will be in about two weeks. Go under the knife on 12 June."

"Hip?"

"Yeah."

He looked around.

"Where’s Crowder?"

"VA Hospital in Albuquerque. He’s fading."

Damn. Each year, the list of those who don’t make it got longer. He’d hauled Crowder on his back through more than 10 clicks of jungle. He’d miss him.

"What about Horsely?"

"Laid the bike down on ’50 in Indiana three months ago. DOA."

Well, at least it wasn’t age. Or maybe it was. A younger man might have survived.

For the next 90 minutes, they ignored the ravages of age and worries about cholesterol and hardened arteries, wolfing down pork chops, bacon, eggs and hash browns, talking about days that have long since passed.

"They say we will have a quarter million out today. Maybe more than a hundred thousand bikes. Kinda miss the old days when there only a few hundred of us."

"Yeah, at this rate, there will be more out there than who actually served. Getting hard to tell the wannabes from those who were in the shit."

"I can tell. Always could."

"Hey, remember the guy who showed up last year with the Vulcan? Thought he was gonna get killed. Bringing a Jap bike to Thunder. Ain’t right."

"Saw some Jap bikes on the way in this morning. Some German ones too."

"Yeah, times change."

They finished and headed up Columbia Pike to the Pentagon, joining a mass of bikes and the thunder of unmuffled exhausts in the parking lot. He opened the saddlebag and pulled out the same American flag and black POW-MIA flag he had used for the past 11 years. Along with his Boonie hat. At least it still fit.

An hour later, they were in line, pulling out, headed for the Memorial Bridge and the Mall in Washington. Rolling Thunder was under way.

He’d been on the first one, more than a decade earlier, a much smaller group of Vietnam vets riding their bikes into Washington to protest the U.S. government’s inaction on resolving the nagging issue of what happened to too many American servicemen who were unaccounted for Prisoners of War or still listed as Missing in Action.

Back then, the local law refused to cooperate and the veterans groups looked askance as the mostly long-haired group of motorcyclists who looked more like Hell’s Angels than veterans of a forgotten war.

But Thunder had grown through the years, along with the awareness that Uncle Sam had not done right by those left behind in Southeast Asia. The longhairs were still there, the heart of the movement, but Thunder now included bank clerks, accountants and the widows and children of men who were left behind. Now they got police escorts and the Vets groups were more tolerant.

As he crossed Memorial Bridge, a number of those in the crowd stepped out to slap the hands of those coming in. A young woman handed him a small American flag. He stuck the flag in his handbrake.

They circled the Mall before parking and heading to the Wall. Officially, it is called the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. But those who were there just called it the Wall. It takes a while before some Vietnam vets can go there. Some never get up the nerve.

It took Rolling Thunder 1 to get him to the Wall. Afterwards, he was sorry he had waited so long to go.

He walked the length, scanning the dark service for names he knew. He always found them, even when he didn’t want to. One  who died next to him. A young man who had one day to go when a mortar round took him out. Another who was already dead when they arrived to extract him. Names and faces that were still clear in his memory after 30 years.

He knelt and prayed with his buddies before leaving. Then they rode back across the Potomac and visited Arlington Cemetery to say hello to some others who didn’t make it.

People looked at the small group of gray-haired men in their motorcycle leathers and gave them a wide berth, not sure of what brought such a dangerous-looking group out to a place of honor on Memorial Day weekend. But it didn’t take long for the rough-looking crowd to quickly outnumber those in their Sunday best.

Later, they sat at Hard Times Café in Arlington and wondered how many more Rolling Thunders it would take before the federal government finally did something.

"How much longer we gonna keep doing this?"

"Until we get some answers."

Then they parted, promising – as always – to keep in touch during the year but knowing – as always – that they probably won’t see or talk to each again until next year’s Memorial Day weekend.

He wheeled the Harley back into the garage, listened to it idle for a few minutes, and shut her down, covering her with the tarp.

Once inside, he unstrapped the leather chaps, took off the boots, and put them away.

Until next year. ++



What's right and good doesn't come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does.  Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there's one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers

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