BS: Memorial day stories

Subject: BS: Memorial day stories
From: Donuel
Date: 29 May 11 - 01:42 PM

The Soul Stitcher


He said he to call him a soul stitcher and not a Doctor or a counselor or soul surgeon. He said a tailor was closer to what he did than an impersonal surgeon who cut out bad parts and replaced them with a live donated transplant or dead metal or plastic.

With the same lack of credentials as the speech therapist at the heart of the film The King's Speech, I heard of this dyslexic hypnotherapist who volunteered to help the war torn whose souls were in constant pain after their tour of duty. He said "the fact that you are suffering is proof that you have a soul. The few people who emerge without a soul being torn wide open are usually the social psychopaths who had either a sick underdeveloped soul or none at all."

Doctors called it battle fatigue, insanity, shell shock, and post traumatic stress syndrome but General George Patton called it yellow cowardice. That only goes to show that sometimes a great nation can effectively use even a social psychopath for good in such things as defeating another social psychopath known as Hitler.

The soul stitcher said to keep his name to themselves and that his fee was only to cover travel expense and if further recompense was felt necessary to reward the soul stitcher at the end of treatment, leave it in the hands of friends, family or church to think of a gift more imaginative than money.

He warned that some of the stitching would be done with mental anesthetic and some of it would be done with no pain killers at all. He said if you can imagine that you were three people in one body I can assure you that 2 of the three people will be healed enough to care for the one who is not. That is the way with old injuries that aren't treated soon enough. If a torn soul is treated immediately there is a chance all three will heal with just a scar left to show of the ordeal.

I asked him if he had ever been to war. He said only for the grace of parents who insisted every year for 15 years that I not become cannon fodder, did I not go off to the Viet Nam War. "When I was young and foolish I even called a returning veteran a baby killer and the sad look in his eye became fixed like a picture in my mind to this day. For him and others I do this work partly for my redemption as well as theirs."

I told him I wondered why he said he was dyslexic and if that was important. He said that it meant he could not read and can not spell but if he did he would try he could get agonizing headaches. "It means that I had to find other ways to learn about the world and like a blind man I used other senses. One of those senses was seeing things others did not. Some of those things are like knowing things that I should have no reason to know as if I throw a bucket on a rope down some kind of time well and pull up the cool fresh truth. It means that when I speak extemporaneously I sound as if I am speaking lines of poem that are out of order.

How long does this soul stitching take? "It takes a year. I know that when I say 'it takes a year' it sounds like an aphorism but is one I believe in. Most old sayings are BS especially the one that says 'whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger'. To be precise is impossible but it is best when it takes four seasons, but on rare occasion as little as little as three months of soul stitching is all that is needed. When could you start? He said "we have".

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: Little Robyn
Date: 29 May 11 - 04:57 PM

I've just found my baby brother on youtube. I used to drag him around folk festivals many years ago and I arranged piano lessons for him when he was only 6 (we knew he was a musical genius) but his taste moved to musical shows and he has spent his adult life being a musical director/pianist.
I've never seen Miss Saigon but hearing this for the first time last night made me think of all the fatherless children left behind after any war....... So sad!
Here's Michael Williams
accompanying Chris Crowe, singing Bui Doi.
I just love it - I'd better watch it again.
Robyn

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: gnu
Date: 29 May 11 - 05:08 PM

Coool.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: Donuel
Date: 29 May 11 - 08:38 PM

July 14,1861
Camp Clark, Washington DC

Dear Sarah:

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days - perhaps tomorrow. And lest I should not be able to write you again I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I am no more.

I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing - perfectly willing - to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this government, and to pay that debt.

Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but omnipotence can break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly with all those chains to the battlefield. The memory of all the blissful moments I have enjoyed with you come crowding over me, and I feel most deeply grateful to God and you, that I have enjoyed them for so long. And how hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes and future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and see our boys grown up to honorable manhood around us.

If I do not return, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I loved you, nor that when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name...

Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless, how foolish I have sometimes been!...

But, 0 Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they love, I shall always be with you, in the brightest day and in the darkest night... always, always. And when the soft breeze fans your cheek, it shall be my breath, or the cool air your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for me, for we shall meet again...


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ashokan Farewell



Sullivan Ballou was killed a week later at the 1st Battle of Bull Run.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: bobad
Date: 29 May 11 - 09:03 PM

I was looking up info on a former schoolmate of mine, Don Davies, who as a Canadian, joined the US army and died in Viet Nam in what the army classified as death due to burns from a non hostile action, which I take to mean an accident. Surfing around I came across a memorial site for Canadians who died fighting for the US in Viet Nam where I found these two entries:

"I was Donald's platoon Sgt. He was one of the bravest men I served with in my 30 months in Vietnam, He died along with 5 others when an enemy satchel charge was thrown in a bunker while they were sleeping, not as the Us Army reported, non hostile, We served in the combined recon intell platoon, I'm still bitter about the report and it caused me to leave the army after 11 years service, Donald and the rest should have recieved the Purple Heart, I still think of you Donald after almost 40 years, Thanks for your service, RIP, Joe Clock"

""I served with Don Davies; he and 5 other members of our CRIP team were killed 38 years ago, June 29, 1969, when a Viet Cong double agent threw a bomb into our bunker."

It sounds to me like someone was covering his ass by reporting these deaths as an accident.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day
From: Donuel
Date: 29 May 11 - 09:26 PM

Fellow-Countrymen:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Abraham Lincoln




"We cannot change the hearts of these people of the South, but we can make war so terrible... and make them so sick of war that generations [will] pass away before they again appeal to it." -- General Sherman

----

While it has been many generations that have passed since the Civil War, the people of the South still harbor a sense of defeat and vengeful anger at the 'northern aggressors'. I fear that the people of the south and elsewhere under the red state banner have forgotten how terrible war is.

Today they are buying ammunition and guns in unusual quantites, they speak openly of seccesion particualarly in Texas which was indeed a state where many Georgians and southerners fled during Sherman's march to the sea. These Real Americans under red state banners and states rights ideology still clutch bigotry close to their hearts.

To them, President Obama is not the Lincolnesque figure as we northerners believe but is instead as Glen BEck insists, a black man that taunts real Americans who holds onto their bible and guns and is a racist who scorns white people. The idea that big government, formerly called Federalism is the enemy, just as the Union was the enemy to Southern States who had traditions like slavery to uphold.

The South to this day have a gallant tradition of producing some of the most numerous and fierce warriors. For example General George Patton's grandfather fought in General Lee's army of Virginia. The volunteer army of today as well as the National Guard represents a lion's share of our armed services.

It seems to me the farthest right candidates of the republican and tea parties pander most to the Southerners deepest urges for revenge that trace right back to the Civil War.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: Janie
Date: 30 May 11 - 01:17 AM

Into stereotypes, are we?

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: Charmion
Date: 30 May 11 - 08:36 AM

Hi, Bobad:

Would you please post a link to the site commemorating the service of Canadians in the U.S. forces in Vietnam? I would love to see it.

That was not a good time for Canadians who aspired to the warrior's life, and most of those guys just quietly vanished. Some reappeared years later, others just stayed vanished. It wasn't our war, so neither our government nor our veterans' organizations have a word to say about those young men and what happened to them.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: bobad
Date: 30 May 11 - 08:59 AM

Charmion, the memorial page: http://www.canadianvietnamveterans.ca/CanadianVietnamMemorials.html

I am curious as to the possible motivations for the army to have reported these deaths as non-hostile which is clearly contradicted by the two serviceman's accounts. Perhaps you can shed some light on this question.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: Charmion
Date: 30 May 11 - 11:24 AM

Sorry, bobad, but no.

I have plenty of experience with the Canadian government and its habits with respect to withholding information, but I know nothing *of my own knowledged* of the U.S. government's behaviour in this area. Of course, I could speculate and spin a big, fat conspiracy theory, but who needs more of that?

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: gnu
Date: 30 May 11 - 05:10 PM

Thanks for the link bobad. A buddy of my bro has three Purple Hearts for his service with the US Marines in Nam.

We thought it was comical when my bro wrote to us about the third one and his subsequent discharge reading, "Reason for discharge : Moves too slow." Unfortunately, when we saw his buddy a while later it wasn't comical in the least.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 May 11 - 09:46 PM

Memorial Day stories? Like seeing the old WW1 vets at the Veterans' Home while I was growing up, their hands and sometimes their entire bodies shaking from "shell shock" as they drank their bottles of cheap wine? The WW2 neighbor who had his jaw shot away on Betio or my friend childhood pal Larry, whose father died in Europe serving with the 442nd RCT? Shall I tell the story of my best friend, Bob, who was a medic at Qui Nhon, ran solo medcaps to immunize children in local villages, and who died of stomach cancer brought on by the cigarettes he couldn't quit smoking? My friend Tom, who died of a heroin overdose after his combat service in VN? The guy I knew in Colorado who would wake up screaming because he was again seeing his buddies in a remote signal corps unit impaled, with their heads at their feet and their genitals stuffed in their mouths? My youngest brother, who 35+ years after he left the Air Farce was finally recognized as being a really, truly, no-shit, at-least-93-days-boots-on-the-ground VN veteran and who died before the VA could/would even provide him with hearing aids to help him with the hearing he lost flying 3,813 combat hours? My father, who may have helped liberate a Japanese prison camp in the Philippines, or my uncle who fought on Saipan, or his brother who flew bombers against Japan, or...?

Sorry, my Memorial Day stories aren't nice ones of parades and flags and speeches. They deal with real people who lived and breathed and whose loss I mourn every day.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: J-boy
Date: 31 May 11 - 12:02 AM

Amen Rap. There isn't and hasn't and never will be a "good" war.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: Charmion
Date: 31 May 11 - 08:06 AM

I agree with the Rapparee.

Our Dad censored his war memories very strictly, telling only funny stories. But our maternal grandfather came back to Canada on a stretcher, having been run over by a truck in the blackout, and spent the rest of his life in and out of veterans' hospitals. Consequently, my brothers and I were exposed early and often to people who were robbed of the best of their lives, rubbing along as best they could until finally set free by death.

I have always preferred Remembrance Day in November, when everything is usually grey and grim, to the American tradition of Memorial Day in late May. How can you have a properly solemn and regretful observance when the world is bursting with blossom?

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: ranger1
Date: 31 May 11 - 08:48 AM

My grandfather was a WWII vet with a Bronze Star and cluster and a Purple Heart. He got shipped over to Italy at 19 with the Infantry. When I was nine or ten, I asked him about the war. I don't really remember what I asked, what I do remember was him getting that 1000 yard stare and not talking much for the rest of the day. I never asked him anything about the war again. I still, to this day, have no idea what he got those medals for. We didn't even know about the Bronze Star until after he died and my uncle wrote to see if he could get whatever medals my grandfather might have had replaced.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: Wesley S
Date: 31 May 11 - 01:16 PM

I was looking for information about my uncle and found this memoir written by him that I didn't know existed. He left a lot out - but this will give you an idea of what he experienced:


Memories of events while I served with the 120th Evacuation Unit: by Dr. J. H. Mahoney

My official assignment with the 120th Evac Hospital in April, 1945, was management of Anesthesia and surgical rooms. However, in addition, I was assigned Intelligence and Education Officer and transportation officer for our semi-mobile hospital. At midnight , while we were in Frankfurt, we were ordered by General Patton to begin moving at 6 A.M.. Our destination was Weimer where the Buchenwald Concentration Camp had been found by the Rangers.   We made this move. The following morning the Chief of Surgery and I went into the Camp. We saw the guard dogs, the crematories with half - burned bodies. We observed living skeletons and wagons filled with dead bodies ready for cremation. We saw the horrible degradation of the human race.
We heard there was a surgical hospital in the camp and moved until we located it. We found a modern, clean hospital with modern surgery being done. The surgeon was finishing a case. He was an inmate at the camp and had been a Professor of Surgery in a medical school in Austria. He carried on a conversation with us in English. He was most curious what was going on in the field of medicine in the outside world since he had been out of touch for five years. We learned his story. He had been an eminent surgeon. When he had been shipped to the concentration camp the SS wanted him to do their surgery. He would agree to this only on the condition that he have his own unit hospital and be allowed to treat and perform surgery on the camp inmates also and that the inmates would be afforded the same rooms, beds, food and treatment provided to the SS people. So valuable were his services that these terms were agreed to. When he saw inmates needing surgery he would operate. He made sure these patients got food before and good treatment afterward. In this way he was able to save some of the better brains of Europe. This surgeon's moral and professional courage, in the face of death, originally, remains an inspiration to me to this day. In the midst of the horrible degradation of the camp we found many examples of the greatest and noblest men the human race has produced. The Austrian surgeon is one notable example.

Next we proceeded to investigate the barracks where the inmates lived. Bunks were stacked six high, one atop the other. The strongest slept in the top bunks. With the prevalence of diarrhea from disease and starvation, the inmates in the lower bunks were often showered with excrement from the upper bunks. If the weakest did not die rapidly enough the SS troops hastened death in many ways. The most economical seemed to be a small shot of formaldehyde in an arm vein. When we started nutritional IVs, the first few resisted fearing it was a death injection. After thirty-six hours the inmates receiving IV nutrition showed such remarkable improvement, the medical workers were met at the doors of the barracks each morning by inmates wanting this life giving "magic" in their arms. Our forceful communication and our results worked like a miracle.
In one of the barracks we found one person with ten rotting toes, some bones protruding. We asked what caused this injury. He stated his buddy in the next bed had put toothpicks under each toe nail and had lit them on fire. Why, we asked. He stated it was necessary or the SS would kill both of them. Some of the SS apparently enjoyed torture in various forms.
We met an inmate who had an especially interesting story. He was a Catholic priest, a German citizen, who had joined a French Socialist group in South America. He returned to Germany in 1939 for medical reasons. When he stepped off the ship at Hamberg he was taken by German authorities and placed in a concentration camp. He was taken from one camp to another and when we found him at Buchenwald he was emaciated and barely alive. We asked him how he kept his mind through all these years of various tortures. He told us that he spent much time in mental prayer. There were some parts of the Bible he would repeat from memory. He also made a mental list of the principal Germans who committed gross atrocities against society. He would repeat their names mentally so he could remember and bear witness against them. This he did at the Nurinburg trials.

After Buchenwald I had a better understanding of the great extremes humanity could endure. I seemed to have less tolerance for those extremes. Gifted and less gifted people all deserve consideration and respect beyond their abilities. Each one is a child of a Supreme Being! Since Buchenwald I have tried to live with increased respect for my fellow man, though I have not always succeeded.

After I returned home from the war I saw that many of our American people did not seem to appreciate the wonderful life we have in the United States. Many of our young and our finest paid a terrible price that we might live so well.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: Charmion
Date: 31 May 11 - 01:22 PM

Oh, Wesley ...

That document deserves to be carefully preserved as a family relic, perhaps tucked between the pages of the Bible.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: Donuel
Date: 31 May 11 - 02:18 PM

It is crucial that these true memorial day stories are told and told often.

I once wrote that if we had lifetimes of 700 years instead of 70 there would be no more wars or memorial days. The true memories would be so vivid that a big war every 2 generations would be impossible. What we have today is never ending war known by a hundred names other than war.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: gnu
Date: 31 May 11 - 02:39 PM

Rap... Wesley... tears in my eyes.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 31 May 11 - 04:05 PM

A helluva thread, here.
Worth reading... and re-reading... Many times.
I suggest that (after it disappears "below the line") it be revived on the occasion of future Memorial -- and Veterans -- Days.
(I'll try to do my part...)

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 01 Jun 11 - 01:59 AM

There was great cruelty in Canada to veterans who served in Vietnam..from Canada. And this was not just what was normal at that time from their peers..it was from older veterans who would not let them march in parades..I think mostly in Winnepeg. I went to a camp for Canadian Vietnam veterans once and they invited U.S. There were a lot of mostly men there...I can't remember what they called it but I will never forget. They were extremely hurt by the action of other veterans, who should have known better. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Jun 11 - 10:32 AM

My younger brother (still alive) went to join the local American Legion Post.

Someone at the bar asked what war he was in. Tony told him, "Vietnam."

The guy sniffed and said, sneeringly, "We WON our war!"

Tony can get right tetchy at times, especially when someone questions his military service. So he quietly walked over to the fellow, took him by the shirt collar and lifted him, with on hand, off the stool and holding him at arm's length said quietly, "We weren't allowed to." Then he dropped him.

Tony was admitted to the Legion and has served in several offices. No one ever, ever questioned him again.

I don't intend to get into a discussion of the war in VN or anywhere else. But if politicians are going to send young men and women to fight then those politicians should be willing and eager to the pay the costs involved -- ALL the costs, including the on-going ones when the troops come home. Signs and stickers and yellow ribbons are fine, but paying for needed medical and mental health care is far more important. It's the individual who who fought who bears the physical and emotional scars, not the politician. AND it's the people where the war raged that bear the scars, too -- in physical and mental wounds, in property destroyed, in dealing with unexploded ordnance and landmines and the rest.

If a country isn't willing to pay the price of a war, both the immediate and future price, don't fight.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: Wesley S
Date: 01 Jun 11 - 01:25 PM

Yes - In my mind - "Support our Troops" means sending them into battle only when you have to - bringing them home as soon as possible - and paying them the wage they deserve for their service. Not to mention medical costs, ect...

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: kendall
Date: 02 Jun 11 - 06:49 AM

War is the ultimate failure.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: J-boy
Date: 03 Jun 11 - 12:35 AM

Yes. Unless we outgrow it we as a species are doomed. I try to be optimistic but given our history I think we are most likely fucked. The biggest loss will be all the other forms of life we are destroying and will destroy along with us. We have survived 60-odd years with nuclear weapons by luck alone. Our luck is due to run out.

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: saulgoldie
Date: 03 Jun 11 - 04:20 PM

From: Rapparee - PM
Date: 30 May 11 - 09:46 PM

Yes, I agree, Rapparee. And Kendall, too. War is the ultimate failure of humans to solve their problems with all the other means that are far less costly and less injurious. But, as we have seen in several threads here in recent months, there are times when conversation and discourse fail us, or when one or more parties is just batshit crazy in the first place.

As sad as the thought makes me to even think it, sometimes war is the only way out. History judges whether it was the right decision. Such a long view judgment cannot be known in the moment. My feeling is that the US has been in only "bad wars" since WWII, which was necessary to stop the madman, Hitler. But that does not mean that war is not hell, no matter what the purpose.

I cannot pass a Memorial Day without hearing "And The Band Played 'Waltzing Matilda'" and "The Universal Soldier" in my head. Sad. So sad. But even as I loathe war and I think humanity does not do nearly enough to avoid making it happen, I also do appreciate the sacrifice of those who see it as their duty.

Saul

Subject: RE: BS: Memorial day stories
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 04 Jun 11 - 03:05 AM

A few years ago I was at Mystic Seaport on Memorial Day weekend. That year it was not actually Memorial Day but the Saturday or Sunday instead. David Littlefield was the chanteyman that day, and during one of demos that include songs, a man came aboard and said that when he was a boy he Had been on a cliff in Normandy watching the ships come in for D-Day and that he knew then the war would end.