A Soldiers Story

One bright sunny Saturday morning I checked a military four door sedan out of the motorpool, picked up the chaplain and we both headed to a funeral about a hundred miles away. After a couple of hours, we arrived in a small vacant town that looked as if time had stood still at the turn of the last century. As I remember, there were even some hitching posts for horses still remaining on main street.

Kind of lost, we pulled into an old gas station and garage and just like in a Norman Rockwell painting, a young man with greasy hands and runny nose appeared. Fondling his mechanics towel, as if to symbolize his success in life, he moved dramatically slow to our car. Because of his draft age appearance, I remember prejudicially thinking that perhaps slowness precludes one from military service.

As he approached the passenger side of the car, the chaplain politely asked where such an such streets would be. "Oh!, ya all want to go on down to Nigger Town" was his casual reply and he pointed the direction. Afraid that any further conversation might evoke an additional insult to our fallen comrade, we left without even getting gas. The chaplain, being from this great state of Texas was visibly embarrassed.

We finally found the home of the deceased soldiers' family. According to proper protocol, I would remain with the car to protect our government's property while the chaplain went inside to do whatever chaplains do best. Another officer had already arrived in another car and was inside explaining to the widow all the numerous benefits she would be receiving.

After about half an hour, the widow came outside with a plate of fried chicken for the other driver and I. She also graciously invited us inside her home. Regretfully, we had to decline with untruthful excuses. We couldn't very well tell her that the well being of her government's fucking car held top priority.

Finally, a limousine arrived to take the family to the funeral. As we drove into the hills, the pavement ended and our cars began to bump along until, out of the woods, a very small but complete town emerged. As a city kid from L.A., I had never seen such a scene. The entire all black community was present, dressed in their finery, obviously to pay respect, but also to attend an event. I could only guess that this twenty year Army veteran, who rose to a high rank for an enlisted man, had over the years gained the love and respect of everyone.

Right in the middle of a late 1800's main street, the late model highly polished hearse seemed misplaced in some sort of twilight zone.

Just as I tuned into the sound of stiff leather shoes clapping along the old wooden boardwalk, the organ from an old church began to wail. The flag draped casket was honorably carried by comrades in arms into the overcrowded wooden building. The chaplain went inside while I stood respectfully at attention, next to the car. The old Gothic window frames appeared as giant keyholes and I peeked to my right to see what looked like, hundreds of waving fans (the cardboard ones with wooden handles) and heard the crying and wailing as it poured out into the dusty street.

As I stood there thinking to myself "he died instead of me". A proudly dressed man of about sixty years came up to me and asked "Did you know him?" This friendly man would never know just how well I knew the deceased. In the hour or so that I waited in the car outside the family home, his little children occasionally stepped outside to play and their personalities expressed it all. He was a good man and he laid down his life for another.

I could not speak, as a million thoughts and only one flooded my head. The old man must have seen what I could only feel, a river of tears that streamed down my face, for he answered softly, his own personal question with "I understand".

As you might have guessed, I was a chaplain's assistant spending a certain amount of time immersed in highly charged emotional situations.

After a time, some of us were coming to the realization that our recently proclaimed "Great Society" was merely Lyndon Johnson's methodical way of providing equal opportunity via affirmative "action" in the rice paddies of Vietnam.

During time of war, injustices against people of various races is common place. Such as during World War II, when Japanese Americans were caged in barbed wire camps until becoming of age to be drafted into the very same military that had imprisoned them. But I would always wonder if the great "civil rights" president LBJ knew that in his own state of Texas, the law read, that no Negro person could marry a caucasian person within its borders.

I mention this because I remember specifically one occasion when the chaplain, very perplexed, asked me "What should I do? How can I tell him he can die for his country, but he can't get married?" I looked over the chaplain's shoulder to see the black and white couple struggling to conceal their childlike joy. In less than 48 hours, the denied American would ship out for Vietnam.

Thirty years later, on December 6, 1995, I experienced a significant heart attack. Being alone for some time with the lack of precious red fluid reaching certain regions of my nerve center, the appropriate warning light started flashing, so instinctively I began banging on Heaven's gate. With no response and overwhelming loneliness, I reluctantly proceeded downstairs to the other place. Receiving rejection from even the fiery furnace, my parole from earth was denied. But having fearful death reduced to 'been there, done that' a certain freedom emerged and for the first time I would no longer be afraid to visit the healing 'Vietnam Wall'.

My long delayed and special purpose for searching the most honorable names embodied in the Holy Granite goes back to 1967 when I first encountered all that was good in mankind. His name was Otha. Unlike celebrities, movie stars, inventors and other great personalities, all that can be said of Otha is that he truly was " all that was good in mankind". I was sure that because Otha was something special and because his goodness shown like brilliant rays of sunlight, those who held hate in their hearts were bent on testing him at the great abyss.

We corresponded until his last letter, which I received shortly before my release from the Army. Underneath his words of kindness, I detected his premonition of imminent demise. Devastated, I pleaded with the chaplain to exercise any influence he might have to get Otha out of Vietnam.

While the chaplain was also concerned, exhibiting favoritism in the ranks and under God was understandably dangerous at that time. The fine line between Church and State had many times been severed and restless skeletons were already scratching down the closet doors. I would now begin to believe that as well as dividing our beloved country, the Vietnam war was sucking the life blood out of the most decent human being I had ever known.

Years later when the Vietnam Memorial was erected, my first thought was to go to Washington, but troubling thoughts invaded my conscience. If Otha's name was really on that wall, as I imagined, I would not be able to handle it. In my mind, Otha represented all that was good about America and if the madmen of the White House destroyed Otha, then common sense told me that America was just a rotting corpse waiting to be buried. I was also intelligent enough to know a little bit about myself and I didn't want to become dangerous. Instead, I unwittingly let the unknown become the driving force behind my next 30 years and some might say that was dangerous enough.

Later in time, replicas of the sacred wall would visit cities throughout the United States and on occasion, when a visit was nearby, each time I would have to stop myself from substantiating the truth.

Finally, as only one who has experienced a near death event can comprehend, my heart attack in 95 erased all of my worldly fears, to the extent that when the traveling Wall appeared in a nearby public park on Memorial Day weekend in 1997, I would go. Even as I write about it now, the tears are welling up. I can only compare this moment in my life to when as a young teenager, I peered into my beloved grandfather's casket.

As my wife and ..... I am finding it very difficult right now. I have waited months to even begin writing this part. My head feels like a rain cloud ready to burst. As my wife cradles my arm, we walk across the freshly mowed park grass approaching the Wall. A million thoughts and again only one engulf my fragile mind. I am fighting back tears with every ounce of manly pride that I can find within my insignificant being. I must stop for a while, I cannot write, the reliving has fractured the cloud.

It is a hundred feet away and no turning back from the deciding moment. Thirty years is long enough. My wife supports my sagging arm, but I do not reveal that my legs are melting away. As we round the corner of the Holy Wall, I want to scream "Is he here? Does anyone know, Is Otha here?" But everyone is reverently seeking their own quiet truth.

The thousands of names are just too overwhelming. I feel as though I know them all. I ask someone "How are the names listed, alphabetical or what". His reply "By year, by year of death, with the first year to the left and the last years to the right". I quickly went to 1967. There was a young girl kneeling to discover someone she never knew, except by family talk. I immediately thought "oh my God, is this the way Otha's daughter remembers her father"

I knelt down beside her and searched for my precious name. There is no Otha, but my emotions are exploding now. I desperately want to tell the little girl that her father was greater than any person she will ever know. Then I realize that her mother, standing close by, will preserve the life of this little girls father or grandfather for generations to come.

Frantic now, I look under 1968 and again there is no Otha. I'm confused, is this too good to be true? I ask someone "if the name is not here does that mean they are alive?" Their response was "Go check over there in the books". Now I must be sure. We go to a long table where volunteers have prepared books. I ask them to check for Otha. His name can not be found and now I panic. "Let me see" and I turn the book to face me. I remember thinking "I have to find his name, no I don't want to find his name". In audible voice I proclaim "I don't see his name, he must be alive" and my eyes begin to flood. The women handling the book reacted with "It's OK". I looked into her eyes and she seemed to understand all that I was feeling, and I knew why.

I said "Maybe I better double check" and she comforted me with "Take your time, it's OK". I felt like I was at Heaven's door and she was an angel. She assured me that it was OK and that Otha was not there. I sensed that my experience was not unusual at all and her unspoken words "you can go live now" would be repeated for others.

As my wife and I began walking away, the floodgates to my soul burst wide open. My greatest fear was unrealized but as we passed, once again, the fifty thousand unnecessary tombstones, I couldn't help but feel that ungodly rage within.