Memorial Day

In my life, we’ve only clearly won a military confrontation once. In Desert Storm, political leadership took the advice of Military leadership. Setting clear and clearly attainable objectives, we pushed Iraq out of Kuwait and came home with minimum casualties on either side.

You could argue that we won the Cold War. In 1987, Ronald Reagan challenged the soviet premier to “tear down this wall.” In 1989, it did come down. Reagan lived five more years, suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s. It’s unclear how much he knew when, but it’s reported that he was aware and understood the importance of what happened in Berlin.

The KGB and the Russian Mob took control after that, but our old enemy was gone, perhaps replaced by a new enemy, but you still have to count this as a win.

We’ve always had the strongest Military leadership; where we failed was in political leadership.

Nixon promised to win the war in Vietnam through strength and get us out in victory. Communist rebels began hiding in Cambodia, a beautiful, peaceful country filled with beautiful, peaceful people. Instead of helping them with the invading rebels, we illegally bombed Cambodian villages, killing mostly civilians. Nixon was on the verge of being impeached for Watergate. He should have been impeached for that.

When the rebels won the upper hand and advanced on Saigon during the Tet Holiday, Americans and Vietnamese allies were so desperate to retreat that we had to push helicopters off our ships because the ships were so full of people that they were in danger of sinking from the extra weight. We did not win.

Attacked by men we once armed to attack the soviets, George W Bush began a conflict that hasn’t yet ended. To get us out of Afghanistan, President Biden left untold military riches behind, but we got out. We’re still fighting every other Middle Eastern front, including Iraq. We did not win.

In my father’s generation, and in his father’s generation, it was very different.

Missco was part of the National Office Products Association, the National Purchasing Association, and a bunch of others.

My time with daddy’s professional friends filled me with so many stories.

One of the guys I loved the most at NOPA was Ray “Boomer” Wilson. Ray was a frogman in WWII. His job was to put on really primative scuba gear and either detach or defuse mines at sea.

Hence the name:

Mines, he couldn’t defuse; he’d detach from its anchor, and they’d float to the surface. On the surface, they’d shoot at the mine until it exploded. Boom!

Sound travels much more efficiently in water than it does on land. Even though Ray was on the surface treading water when they detonated the mines, the sound waves still hit him worse than anybody.

By the time I met Boomer, he was deaf as hell. You had to shout in his left ear because his right ear was useless.

On Memorial Day, Ray didn’t lose his life defending his country, but he lost his hearing.

A childhood infection meant that my Uncle Robert had one leg slightly shorter than the other. When war began in Europe, he left his legal practice and tried to enlist, but he was refused because of his leg.

Undaunted, he went to France to drive an ambulance, bringing soldiers from the front to a triage station where limbs were lost but lives were saved.

The Germans used a gas that was heavier than air. It’s illegal now. The idea of there being legal and illegal in war seems so strange to me. They all kill.

During the Great War, Uncle Robert picked up two wounded soldiers in his Ford ambulance. Driving them to the triage station, he traveled through a dale in the French countryside. Foggy, he didn’t realize German mustard gas had settled in the depression of the dale.

By the time he got to triage, one of the soldiers was dead. Robert would be dead by morning. He’s buried in France, but his brother, my Uncle Boyd, bought a matching tombstone for him in Hesterville, Mississippi.

The war to end all wars didn’t end anything. It took my Uncle Robert.

My favorite cousin, Robert Wingate, was named for our Uncle Robert. His momma, Robert’s baby sister, married a man from Millsaps named Wingate, and they settled in Greenwood.

We like to celebrate Memorial Day with barbecue and bathing suits. What Memorial Day means is something entirely different.