What will you ask if the only family you ever had was buried there, wearing the name of every buddy that put his life on the line protecting yours, and how you cried when you couldn't protect theirs?
So, I have one last request...
...to bury my heart where my buddies are, in Arlington's Stones Garden
By WWII we had at home one of those wooden wireless radio build like a tower with a round top, showing in the middle some kind of wood filigree over a yellow fabric, like the stained glass one see at church, I always thought of it being kind of a miniature image of a cathedral.
The radio blared one day in the fall of 1939 that the world was again at it, after having fought a war, which was supposed to finish all the wars.
Father said that 1918 Versailles Treaty missed the point, when your win it isn’t wise to humiliate.
And that also the opportunity was missed to really end all the wars if just revenge and humiliation was hold out and a group of very greedy business people forcing upon others usury conditions resulting few years after in the demise of their own people was left out of the equation, whatever he meant at the time.
It was when being 15 years old looking like an undeveloped 18s didn’t matter too much, cannon fodder was needed and nobody was looking the horse’s teeth’s.
It was then, when my older brothers showing off, went flying over the rooftops over our house and subsequently getting an earful for that I am sure, that I decided to itch a ride on the “adventure”.
Between the Recruiting Office and the end of conflicts day is a war, and the war is like a book.
A luxurious hard covers book with gold trimmings would look nice on your bookshelves.
Over one thousand eight hundred pages telling about every thing, and with a happy end no less.
Noting prepares you for the “adventures” between the covers, but teaches you about losing friends as fast as you are making them.
The first lesson is about being alone with your fears and learning that making buddies doesn’t help either, it hurts when they kept on falling.
The graduation comes surviving the “adventure”, seasoned and skeptical soldier with a little touch of cynicism, which will be not looking back or reminiscing the “joys” of fight.
I remember the war had ended and the world was in chaos, I was threading on knee-high snow accompanied by Benjamin, a soldier of Yugoslavs ancestors, along railway tracks that had escaped on being bomb and now used for a short distance transport supply line.
Our respective troops were somewhere; we had no more rations and not eat for three days.
You could try waiving down a train and be run down for your troubles.
Still everybody was suspicious of everybody.
Ben had, for whatever reason carrying in his pocket a peppershaker, no salt, with pepper for Pete’s sake!
We didn’t thirsted, plenty of snow around to melt in the mouth.
I think I knew then how Moses folk had felt when manna rained on them, suddenly in front of us was a frozen piece of bread no large than two fists put together and a yard away we found an onion.
We put that treasures inside our clothes trying to taw them a little, our stomachs really rumbling now after our eyes told the starving tigers inside that food was coming.
Munching half frozen onion with pepper and hard bread make us to break a smile in unshaved faces.
The ribbons will tell you were there, not what we saw or what happened on the burned soil of some forsaken piece of land no good to anybody, but where your friends lied down and didn’t came up.
The same ones that went away waiving gleefully from the train windows to sweethearts waiving proudly back at their “men” out to conquer.
It was a perfumes mix of manly after-shave versus delicate eau-de-cologne.
Many of the trains returned empty.
If WWII was an unforgettable (?) lesson, it was learned very little about anything, because we were at “it” again in Korea, freezing or butts in Asia by courtesy of a winter proudly announced as not be so cold since the dinosaurs walked around; defending this one, or that one hill with tongue twisting names from Koreans and Chinese’s troops not playfully throwing snow balls at us.
Why we were there? I soldier don’t ask, he have always a brass monkey over him pointing to somewhere, to conquer another piece of land who nobody gave a hoot before but that for some reason a general, with so many stars he probably got them after someone clubbed him on the head, decided that wanting something was a good reason to send your buddies to keel over.
Success means another star, failure means oops! We should try again, should we?
After making a line in the sand and killing a lot of a few thousand, Korea became a Mexican stand.
The yellow bandits on one side, the gringos wearing the good guys white hats on the other.
After knocking down a few thousand more we called it quits with Parallel 38 as lucky number.
Are we satisfied?
Not a chance.
The Big Chief in Washington’s White Tepee had already started to listen about the dominoes theory.
Say, you have a few hundred dominoes and set them upright, in file and just in reach of each other.
When you topple the first against the second everybody falls like an invisible finger is pushing.
That’s the game, with dominoes.
When the game is played with countries, the scary specter of what’s coming if you don’t do something it would rattle all the skeletons in the closet.
At first a trickle of observes, of course inadequate by left to themselves. Trainers were needed and trainers were sent, mind you, no combatants.
But nobody told Charlie, of Vietnam renown, that the observers and trainers weren’t a legitimate target and drew First Blood.
We were sent there to protect the people that needed to be protected, like as bodyguards not as combatant, we should fire back only when fired upon, we weren’t the aggressors, just helping a friend, who couldn’t swim, how not to drown.
It was then, when stubborn Charlie recklessly threw manure at the fan, that things got moving.
Gradually in cosmos time, but fast down there, troops, planes and warships descended like metallic locust on a mean modus.
If the people around the White Tepee had let us alone, no interference, no “1991 hundred days war”, we could have, commanded by a General Patton’s like, kicked Charlie all the way to Manchuria, tunnels or no tunnels.
We got at the end, because inexcusable stupidity a black wall with fifty-six thousand names for nothing.
At seventeen years old, we started pulling a cart empty of experiences.
The world then looked very different, with a heart nearly exploding of patriotism one became a soldier to serve ones country.
One got a family of many brothers.
Many of them are gone.
At eighty, the world is different, we don’t care to pull the cart no more, and it’s too heavy and so full, that for a long time, experiences good and bad had been falling without memory noticing.
Someone asked, “Why be a soldier for so long?”
I responded that once I thought being a carpenter,
but then remembered a carpenter getting crucified.
Went by JFK flame and recalled he saying about what you can do for your country, no stormy winds had ever kill that flame and I hope no one will have the temerity of making a political statement by blowing it out, because it signify the fire burning inside us.
When I am gone, I don’t care what you do with my body, but bury my heart in Arlington’s stones garden.
...a great story of respect...with respect from one reading it...and follow your heart...for I could not think of a better place for time to honor your memory Georg.
this is true heart rendered write...
John
You give the reader [me] a heart-breaking overview of the wars in which the US has participated. I’m not sure that we’ve learned a whole lot, but I do know that for those who have fought to keep us free – I salute you. Arlington is where all soldiers have a right to be interred. I think your heart is already there – you honor the fallen most beautifully.
Heart touching write; God bless you, sir! If anyone deserves to be honored at Arlington National Cemetary, it's YOU. No, ALL veterans!! They are the true Heroes!
(((HUGS))) and much love, your friend in Tx., Karen Lynn. :(
Georg,
I enlisted in the Army one step ahead of the draft, because I didn't want to be an infantry "grunt," and besides at that time they were drafting young men into the Marines. I certainly didn't want to be one of the few, the proud, or the dead. So instead I chose being a Medic, because when I returned I wanted to go to medical school.
I joined with my head held high and felt it my patriotic duty to my country, like my father so proudly served, and his father before him.
My first duty station was Japan. A hospital in Yokohama. I didn't like it all that much because I stupidly wanted to be where the action was. I could have stayed in Japan my whole three years. But anyway off I went to Nam and soon realized that the "war" wasn't about anything. take one hill, exagerate a body count, then give it back, so we could take it again another day. I also wondered many other things during my stay, but I came home with a different attitude. No longer was the US "Mom and apple pie." Yes, I grew up there and I never made it to medical school either. Something about PTSD. But I'm still proud I served, just not as proud of our country as I once was.
Georg, your heart does belong in Arlington with your body. But please don't leave us yet. I'm not ready for another friend to go. Besides, who will keep PeeWee Ed and Jersey Devil Ed in line!
Much love,
annie
If anyone's heart eventually belongs in Arlington, it's yours, my friend. I've been there many times, and it's a place we should all visit often, with much deep respect and remembrance.
These song lyrics and art are tales, tides and twinkling lights - tunes telling stories of warmth and sun, city and sand, paths that lead, and the coins we can keep in the Karma Bank. Spirit's been bypassed for sorrow, dreaming of a better tomorrow .
...to bury my heart where my buddies are, in Arlington's Stones Garden
