Fallen Comrades Honored Veterans Offer Prayers For Peace And The Loved Ones Left Behind

As long as two comrades survive, the eulogy begins.

There are 50 or so here, as somber as the gray day, standing in a circle around the tall gray-white veterans monument, not far from Lake Coeur d’Alene and Tubbs Hill.

The salutes are smart, but silent. And for all of the people - the red jackets and hats of the Marine Corps League, the blues and browns of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the blues of the Navy and American Legion - it’s as lonely as if there are only two comrades. It’s as lonely as the sound of the wind, snapping the flag, rasping the speaker’s microphone. “We march on with our ranks growing thinner,” VFW chaplain Jim Shepperd offers in prayer, interrupting the wind’s husky oratory. Then these men of war pray for peace, for the widows and children left behind.

Old soldiers give a three-round, four-gun salute. The air publishes the brief stench of cordite, the ringing echo of shots and then astonishing silence.

Three veterans join ranks and march a bouquet of flowers to the waterfront. The other veterans come a respectful distance behind. All come to attention. Four American flags and a VFW flag bear witness.

“For all those lost at sea,” Shepperd calls, pitching the purple, white and pink blossoms into the water. All salute as the flowers rock away. The four-gun salute punches off three more shots. Then the silence.

“As long as we can take a breath, we will always remember,” Harvey Zion, who served in the Navy in World War II and the Marines in Korea, says after the ceremony. “Look at those white crosses in France and Europe; as long as we’re here, they won’t be forgotten.”

How long? “Most military organizations - you can tell by the age of this firing squad - are pretty much dying out,” says Zion.

The average U.S. soldier was 32 in World War II, adds Ray Kincheloe, a Marine who saw Korea. Now these veterans are dying at the rate of about 1,000 a day.

“It’s unreal,” says Kincheloe, now 69 but still standing solid in the red windbreaker of the Pappy Boyington chapter of the U.S. Marine Corps League. Named Boyington, of course, after the North Idaho native and Marine Corps aviator who earned the Medal of Honor in World War II gunning down more than his share of Japanese fighters.

It’s the first Memorial Day ceremony at the Coeur d’Alene monument for one of the younger Marine Corps veterans, Jackie Shelton. She is touched, and disappointed.

“There could be a lot more,” she says of the crowd, “there should be a lot more.”

Susan Rekow agrees. She honors many, many men she knew and a war some thought would never rate a Memorial Day mention - Vietnam.

Her husband, George, served there as part of his 30 years in the Navy. Her brother, Gary Meisinger, saw it as a Marine. Her cousin, Marty Gabriel, was killed as he fought in Vietnam with the Army’s 101st Airborne.

With the hint of rain, the crowd disperses quickly, many breaking into groups of two and threes in search of a breakfast spot.

Dan Cooley swings up on his crutches, disappointed to find out he’s missed the memorial service. But missed things are the most persistent theme in his once-soldierly life - missing honor for the living veterans, missing medical attention for his warmaligned leg, missing comrades.

He served 10 years in the Marines, including a tour in Vietnam. And lost much of his knee to a series of wounds that began when the armored truck he was in was blown up by a tank mine. Cooley’s had six surgeries since November, and innumerable others before that, all part of a veteran’s medical system he says struggles to take care of its soldiers.

“I’ve been fighting for more than 30 years for assistance and it’s a lost battle,” Cooley says. Because of that, Memorial Day is, “the biggest farce the United States knows,” Cooley says. “Talking about veterans already gone,” Cooley adds, gesturing to Coeur d’Alene’s veteran’s memorial. “I have buddies who are dead that I don’t want to remember.”

“The guys who are living need it too.”