Memorial Day 2024: For Those Lost Physically and Spiritually

Date Published: May 30, 2016
​Date Modified: March 14, 2024

​Every Memorial Day, may we remember all the men, women and children who never returned to us—those who made the supreme sacrifice and those who, though they walk amongst us, seem forever lost?

May We Never Have to Walk This Road Alone

Memorial Day is set aside as a time to remember those who never returned from war. They made the ultimate sacrifice.

Tears are shed for those who took their last breath on the battlefield of “kill or be killed.” But I also remember those who returned home dead in spirit. These families, too, lost loved ones forever.

​​I am classified as a Vietnam-era vet but I spent my entire time stationed in Germany.​ ​Intellectually, I know I served during this time. I volunteered. I know I could have ended up there, but I hold in the deepest respect those that were on the front lines.​

They are, to me, the true veterans of the Vietnam era.

​​Although many in my cavalry unit did tours in Vietnam, if one Staff Sergeant had not shared this experience with me, I never would have fully understood what he survived . . .  physically.

Spiritual survival, though, was a different matter.

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One "Survivor's" Story of War at its Worst

I hadn’t known him that long but I knew he was different. He never seemed fully engaged: never talking, never joking, never cursing and swearing, and absolutely, never laughing. At times he was completely gone, lost in an internal world no one was allowed to enter—a place where no human could walk with him. His desk was just across the office from me. Sometimes I would see his shoulders slump and his eyes glaze over.

​One day I summoned the courage to ask, “Sergeant, are you okay?”

He got up and grabbed his hat to go outside, but as he was walking by my desk he stopped to sit. His eyes never left the door though, looking through it to a place beyond.

I was raised that it is impolite to stare. But I don’t think he knew I was even there. It felt as though I was on the other side of a confessional door. I saw his darkened face but I felt anguish. Was I staring? Yes, because for the first time in my twenty years of existence I saw into a fellow human being’s soul.

He spoke softly, “I was responsible for a lot of young lives in Vietnam. Too many times we walked into the jungle only to exit with fewer men than when we started. I fought to keep them and myself alive, not for glory. There was nothing glorious. When a new man arrived I hoped to shock him into caution, but nothing can prepare a person. I warned each one of them to not have a heart, to never care. And one day I was too slow to act.”

He lifted his arm as if the scene were playing out in front of him and let it drop. “A child came walking toward us. ‘Chocolate’ was probably the only English word that child knew. Before I could do anything a bomb strapped to the child detonated killing a young life entrusted into my care.”

His eyes watered, but there were no tears. He had long ago learned how to stop a tear—an open expression of emotion. I saw though, because there was no confessional door between us.

He continued, “I don’t know how long it was after that day, but it felt like we were again walking down that road. . . . Another one of my men caring . . . another child saying . . . this time I shot . . . I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t pause. I didn’t think about right or wrong. I just killed a child.

“But it was different this time. No explosives. . . . no explosion. . . . just a child’s mother’s screams. ​Not directed at me in anger but filled with the pure agony of the god-forsaken. Her cries exposed all the evil I had seen. . . . all I had done. It laid bare all the pain I had inflicted to avoid having pain myself.”
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He turned to look out the window, “Every now-and-then, a sound catches me unaware. I will only hear it faintly, but it will have the right pitch and that day returns. I hear her screams . . . I will hear them for the rest of my life.

“May God forgive me because I will never be able to forgive myself.”
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He got up and walked out the door.

Physically, three lives died on this battlefield: one mother lost an innocent, exploited as an instrument of war; one mother lost an innocent, ignorant of war’s dictum of kill or be killed; and one mother lost an innocent, because—no matter how hard we try—war kills innocents, and destroys innocence.

Spiritually, a fourth life was also lost. ​This young soldier—that managed to leave the battlefield breathing—buried his spirit alongside a child’s.

His mother lost her child too, for to those back home who loved him dearly—the ones he tried to return home to—he had become unrecognizable. I lost touch with this man when I left the service in '74. For too long, I failed to write his story. I hope he was able to forgive himself, because God knows he was put in an unwinnable situation.

​This Memorial Day, may we remember all the men, women and children who never returned to us—those who made the supreme sacrifice and those who, though they walk amongst us, seem forever lost?

Peter E. Greulich, Author

Select image to read the complete rules of "United States Flag Etiquette" on the Veterans Affairs website.

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