I was in the house with the windows closed and the air
conditioner going when I heard a thunderous roar that I couldn’t identify. After
checking around the house, I went out my front door where I could see the road
leading to the baseball park. It was filled with motorcycle riders, their rolling
rumble piercing my ears. Over two hundred, I read later. They were the escort
riders for the Wall That Heals, the
mobile exhibit that would be in town for the next four days. It’s a 250 foot, ½
scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall on the National Mall in
D.C. and its 24 panels contain more than 58,000 names of
those who didn’t make it home. I’ve seen the actual Wall in Washington D.C. and
it was an emotional experience. I had penpal relationships with over fifty guys
over in ‘Nam spread out over four-five years and I tried to look them up in the
index book by the Wall, but after finding a few listed I just couldn’t
continue. It was too haunting and hard. I left behind a poem I wrote, tucked in
a seam between two panels of the Wall. A very dark poem filled with unspeakable
pain about one of those penpals who I had met in person and who nearly
destroyed me.
The traveling replica was in our state once before and Don
and I went to see it. This time it was my husband who left haunted by the experience. At the very end of the 24th panel was a homemade sign on
a stake that contained the name of a friend of Don's. It said he’d died of
Agent Orange. This was in the ‘90s, just after our government finally
got around to acknowledging the connection between Agent Orange and all the medical problems the
guys who were exposed to those chemicals suffered. My husband’s friend had taken his own life just weeks before his wife placed that hand-painted sign at the replica Wall. He was a good guy, a guy who endured too much pain to stick around.
This week, when I heard the mobile Wall was going to be in the neighborhood I thought about
going. I decided against it but the thunderous roar of the escort riders gave
my mind’s eye perfect recall of the emotions that I didn’t want to revisit. You’d
think after fifty years the edges of darkness would be dulled down, you’d think
by now I could tell my story, the one in the poem I left behind in
D.C. But I can’t. I’m not unique. Everyone who goes to ‘The Wall’ has a story of
regrets, sorrows and what-ifs---many, like mine, are still held close to the vest.
When the Wall That
Heals caravan reached the field where the Wall would be displayed a ceremony took
place that included four vintage airplanes flying over my neighborhood. A
relative put a video of them on Facebook circling around the field,
thick streaks of smoke trailing behind them. I saw them when they passed over
my house in close formation before they started their tribute. They made me sad
but my nephew-in-law who posted the video commented that he was “honored to see
them.” The Vietnam War ended before he was old enough to get drafted but the
war was the backdrop to his entire childhood. He’s also an avid Trump
supporter.
Civil War Union Army General William T. Sherman is noted
for saying, "I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is
only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of
the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is
hell." Yet here we are again, this time teetering on the edge of a nuclear war. And
why? Because two bullies are itching to have a quick draw contest to see who
has the biggest dick? If they don’t ratchet the rhetoric down, the next
memorial wall we build will have the names of those lost to a nuclear war and its fallout and it might be
long enough to double as Trump’s border wall.
I have mixed feelings on what it means to be patriotic in
the year 2017. How can anyone claim to honor the flag and fallen soldiers and at
the same time support a president who doesn’t respect free speech? We fought a
war to cement that cornerstone into our Constitution. We are in dangerous
territory with this president! He demonizes the press at every opportunity, then this past weekend
it was six black athletes who were taking a knee in peaceful protest during the
national anthem that he labeled "son-of-a-bitches" and called for boycotting
the NFL until they are fired. Trump seems bent on dividing us, starting a
culture war. We don’t have to like or agree with the point those athletes are trying
to make about racial injustices but it is important that we all understand it’s their
First Amendment right to dissent. Countries that demand total respect for their
flags and anthems are call dictatorships. What comes after threats of getting fired? Jail time? A bullet in the head? What would Kim Jong-un do? What would an unfettered Trump do?
Taking a knee in peaceful protest historically goes back to
Martin Luther King Jr. in the ‘60s. And have we forgotten Hall-of-Famer
baseball legend Jackie Robinson? He didn’t kneel but as he wrote in his
autobiography, "I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the
flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world." Times have changed since
1947 when he broke the color barrier in baseball but anyone who thinks that
Lady Justice is color blind in 2017 is lying to themselves. I doubt Trump cares about the kneeling as much as he cares about distracting everyone from his ineptness in office. ©
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
James Waterman Wise
1936, The Christian Century
