This happened on a road I've driven all my life...one of the highways that I often followed on my path to foolishness. That day, it led to something else.

I once knew an aged warrior. A hero in an unambiguous war. And just once I saw him cry.

That brave old sailor's tears were the first I'd ever seen him weep. For more than 50 years I had known him, and for all of them I'd loved this man. Yet as a son must sometimes do, I'd hated him a bit as well. But time had let those wounds scar over, and death had spoken to us both. Enough it said, and as we laid my mother down to rest we were the father and the son, again. Yet never had I seen a teardrop in the corner of his eye. And then, one day, alone together in the car he failed to hold his crying to himself. But these weren't tears for mom, although perhaps she'd cleared the way. He tried to tell me how he hated those who sang a certain song a certain way.

The highways that we travel sometimes are the place for moments such as this...we drove and talked as every father and son should when time grows short, and your lifetime has become the trail you've traveled through. It was then, that cold April day, that once, just once, my father taught me what I always thought I knew, but never really did.

It took the bold Marine's tears to show me, but I know now, as much as ever I can, just how he felt in 1942, when tens of thousands died that thousands more might live. When bold young men, and women, too, left family, left friends, and volunteered, and begged, and lied to go to war to fight and kill and die themselves for what we take for granted now. This was a time a life away from now. Today, this week's "War" is an "Operation" named by Hollywood marketers, and waged by selfserving and mendacious men. We put our bloodletting out for bid, and then award the crony contract to the highest bidder. We let ourselves then find a proxy, and we sadly use our the sons and daughters of our underclass. The Old Man brought me up short, and took me to a time when the words that formed us were still resonant, when the symbols some find trite today were very much the stuff from which my generation was born. And when that postmodern guilt we bear for what we are had yet to even be invented by pretentious French twits.
So my father's generation didn't choke on these: Courage and Duty, Country and the Flag. They had a sense of honor, pride, esprit du corps. Perhaps I strike a quaint and faintly archaic note as I limn these words so common as to be unheard. But they were not abstractions these strong words...they simply were the warp and woof from which was woven the fabric of America, and of that land, I am. Semper Fidelis is not a motto, nor an ideal, it is an oilslick and an empty lifevest floating still on a godforsaken sea a dozen thousand miles from home, our land of liberty.

And when he told me why he couldn't stand the grand Nashville baroque swoops that country singers give our Anthem, I listened rapt. He told me of a moment when the warship San Francisco sailed for home, and how he still could hear The Anthem sung, without a band, spontaneously raised by the collective voices of the Marines upon Guadalcanal's beach. Her bridge destroyed, 400 dead and more, the San Francisco was but one of many who fought the great sea battles of Guadalcanal. He painted this as we drove on, and as he spoke his voice choked up, and from the corner of those salty eyes, the tear rolled out. And he did not apologize.

Back on that evil island there was no ambiguity. My father cried on our April drive while telling me of something simple. And as he spoke of noble warriors pure and bold, he gave to me as much of one great moment as his simple words could convey.

So, I will remember well that brave men died to let the whole live on. I know now in my soul what price was paid for those who lived, for those who would come home to bear the children that the fallen could not seed. And when on Guadalcanal's blood soaked beach, The First Marines stood proud, and as the San Francisco sailed for Pearl, those men stood reverent and they sang of those broad stripes and our bright stars. A scarred caisson steamed to sea, battered, limping, bloody but unbowed, a monument to a sacrifice that we, the children of that glory owe our all.

So when those fools at baseball parks and speedway bowls take liberties with our Star Spangled Banner, when vain comediennes abuse it as they grab their crotch, take umbrage at the added grace notes, peel away the excess flourishes. Stand up, I beg you, don't yield to cynicism. It is our country. It is right and it is often wrong. But it is ours...and it is what we make it. So take off your hat, and remember how we came to be so petulant and proud, yet free.

And take the time to hear it as it was that day the teenage corpsman stood in reverence, one of many, on a distant shore. Feel our fathers' rage. And for their honor, shed a tear.

Comment:

Beautiful
7/2/2006

Well, Minto, or Minty as we'd call you over here in the UK, I found you when I was looking for something else, which I soon forgot as soon as I started reading.

I read your piece about your father and his generation. It was moving, eloquent and full of truths big and small. I read it and reread it and wondered why it struck such a chord. It wasn't just in the beauty of the words as you described your journey with your father and how he felt about the Star Spangled Banner as sung now and as remembered back then. It was something else, to do with attitudes and generations, and I guessed you would probably be about my age (59), old enough to be sensible but with an emotional depth that would still allow for patriotism, good old-fashioned values and a certain reverence for the generation that is now starting to fade away. That was where the resonance was and, sure enough, as I then went on to read your early archives, a few clues came out to back up my theory.

So, thanks for a powerful and inspiring article, beautifully crafted and written from the heart. The sentiments expressed travel very well, especially straight across the Atlantic.

8/24/2006