Bless Them All And Honor Them Soon
In the small north Georgia town of Tiger, where he farmed when he wasn’t off fighting wars - World War II, Korea and Vietnam - “the Colonel” is known as a man of few words. In a single-page letter addressed to his late wife, the Colonel, who is my father-in-law, wrote recently about the passions of his life: his farm and what’s planted on it, the weather and how it’s treating the farm, his children and what they’ve accomplished, and his abiding memories of his beloved Ruth.
The day he wrote, a thousand shades of green were bursting forth on Tiger Mountain, the farm’s reliable backdrop. His favorite apple trees were locked in their annual struggle against a late spring frost. The letter was a private one, its motivation his 85th birthday. But the values it reflected - just like the apple trees, the mountain, the farm - are to be preserved and passed on.
Like many a soldier of his vintage, writing from the most gruesome corners of our century, the colonel always revealed more of his emotions in his letters than his conversations. Even in ordinary times, he would write rather than telephone.
My father-in-law’s letter reminded me of the heritage handed us by World War II Americans men and women closer to the land they loved and the land they tilled than we are. It made me feel a new sense of urgency about getting on with the proposed World War II memorial before all its veterans - 13.5 million when the effort started 10 years ago, now only 7.5 million - are gone. Former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole has set about raising $100 million to have the memorial in its place, between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, by Veterans Day, 2000.
America saved the world in that war, but those who fought it never got it out and over with, never even got a permanent tribute. Maybe because they didn’t talk of it enough. They kept it, like my father-in-law did, deep down inside. They only let it surface now and then, on sleepless nights or in old age, when raw edges slip out from the covers.
In 1942, the Colonel left young children - ages 8, 5, 3 and 1 - because his country called. So did thousands of other Americans. He was wounded in the North African desert, and he won a Silver Star for a reconnaissance mission he led behind enemy lines.
About a year ago, he got out the maps, marshalled the facts, told the story once and gave the Silver Star to my son, who holds it as a link to his family’s and his country’s history.
After being recalled to Korea, the Colonel knew his abandoned dairy farm wouldn’t put five children through college. He stayed in the Army, serving a final tour in Vietnam. He and my mother-in-law adopted a sixth child, a Vietnamese teenager, now a woman with a graduate degree and a family of her own.
What I hope my own children will take from their grandfather and his era is a clear priority on the non-material, ON care of the land and care for freedom.
Before a new century begins, the Colonel and others like him ought to be recognized with a permanent World War II memorial that says thank you.
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