Sittin' Here Thinkin'

Today, I want to share with you my trip to the WWII Memorial in Washington D.C. Inland Northwest Honor Flight had chosen 35 veterans to make the flight back to Washington along with an excellent group of volunteers called “guardians.” We flew from Spokane to Salt Lake, and then on to Baltimore, Maryland. Upon arrival, we were shuttled to the Hilton Hotel where we ended the day with an outstanding dinner.

Monday morning, Aug. 9, we boarded a charter bus for the drive to the Capitol. As usual, Tony Lamanna and his staff had thought of everything to make the day a pleasant experience. Cold bottled water, wheelchairs, a sack lunch, a doctor, sun screen, and thankfully a “necessary” were all on the bus. The bus driver was a veritable cornucopia of information and he kept us informed as to our location, the buildings and monuments, and the history of the area.

I want to tell you about three things that made an impression on me at the Memorial. I was standing looking at the beautiful fountain that is centered in the memorial when a young couple, and their two children, walked up. The woman said, “I notice from your badge that you were in Germany. We are Germans and we are grateful to the Americans for making our country a free place to live and raise our children.”

The second thing was finding an old friend at the monument. Every person that lived during the war years will remember the drawing and the words, “Kilroy was here.”

Kilroy appears twice on the wall of the memorial and he very much belongs there. He became a part of the culture and brought smiles at a time when there was not too much to smile about.

I stood at the Freedom Wall with its 4,048 gold stars representing the more than 400,000 soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and military personnel who lost their lives, or remain missing in action, in World War II.

 As I looked at the stars, I could not deal with the thousands; I saw individuals. I saw Dumbo, Rip, Whistler, Jack, Murphy, Johnson, and others. Dumbo got his name not because he had big ears, it was acquired when he volunteered to carry the BAR (Browning automatic rifle). I felt a sense of frustration when I realized these men had no real identity to me — I knew them only by their first or last name, or their nickname.

But it was these men and others like them that made it possible for me to stand where I was and think back over the years. As I remembered each man I questioned, “Why am I here and you are not?

Why was I blessed with a long life to live with a wife, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and you were not? 

Why had their lives been taken from them just when it was supposed to have blossomed? I had no answer, just tears, and a terrible sense of loss.

 “Here We Mark the Price of Freedom” is inscribed below the Freedom Wall.   

Some people told me that the trip back to the WW II Memorial would give me closure.

 I did not go on the trip for closure. Closure means to end, shut down, finish, and a conclusion. The human computer (brain) does not work that way.

Experiences are not erased but are buried beneath a pile of other experiences, or in some cases, blurred by magic drugs.

I went back to D.C. for acceptance and adjustment — to be able to accept the joy, the pain, and adjust myself to them.

My prayer is that I will never forget those men I mentioned above. What happened to them makes anything any person did that still has a life pale into insignificance.

 I want to remember, not forget, because remembering makes me hate war with every fiber of my being. Statistics tell us that WW II veterans are dying at the rate of 1,000 a day — all that means is we can say, unlike many of our comrades, we have lived.