I would have written this yesterday, but the Internet service to our town has been down for three days (thanks to First World infrastructure).
On April 1, 1968, my father was killed when the P-3 Orion he was an aircrewman aboard was shot down over a disputed island between South Vietnam and Cambodia, by the Cambodian Army.
It was the only P-3 ever lost in combat.
It has taken a long time for me to get past that. More below the orange barbed wire.
My father had gone off to The Philippines with his squadron, VP-26. The squadron was charged with patrolling the western coastline of Indochina, to spot arms and contraband moving south from North Vietnam for interdiction. The P-3 itself is not armed for such things as bombing or strafing (it is a plane designed to drop sonobouys and depth charges on submarines).
As they flew over the island, a Cambodian Army landing craft mounted with an anti-aircraft gun shot down the P-3. A few hours later, Navy SEALS found the wreckage and the bodies of the aircrew, including my father; none survived.
A few days after April 1, 1968, I was playing at home, then aged seven. I lived in a tiny town in Michigan then. We never saw any traffic from out-of-town.
I was old enough to know what a Navy staff car was when I saw one though, and I knew what it meant when one pulled up in front of our house. (My family lived with my grandparents.) I ran to my grandmother, telling her of the car and the Lieutenant and Chief Petty Officer getting out of the car and walking up the sidewalk to the door.
The next minutes were pandemonium; my mother screaming as she was told the news, my grandmother and I both crying.
Though not religious ourselves, the town arranged a memorial service in the local United Methodist Church. A couple days later, my mother and grandparents flew to Massachusetts for his funeral and burial, leaving me at my aunt's house.
I was not permitted either at the memorial or at the funeral. I was not allowed to have the closure that funerals provide the living. Though I was only seven at the time, I insisted (but was denied) to go to Massachusetts for the funeral.
A long time later, in 1983, while stationed in Virginia Beach in the US Navy myself, I made the trip to Washington DC over Memorial Day weekend to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial for myself. There carved in the stone, all together, were the names of members of the aircrew of that flight. I nearly collapsed seeing my father's name engraved there, and fought back the waterworks (as I came in uniform). After long reflection (I do not know how long), I rendered a salute and returned to my car, where I finally broke down and had the cry I should have had when I was seven.
Fast-forward to 1992: I was stationed in Pittsfield, Massachusetts as a Navy Recruiter. Over the weekend before Memorial Day, I got time off and drove to Chicopee Falls, where my father is buried.
His gravesite was neglected; my father's family was long gone and my mother had never gone there after the funeral. I spent the day (in uniform) cleaning up and polishing the brass Veterans Administration plaque that had become corroded with years of weathering and neglect, and placed a little flag alongside the marker when I was done. I had another cry in the car.
The following weekend I returned to Chicopee Falls, to see that the Veterans of Foreign Wars had placed a flagholder in the ground and placed my little flag in it.
I'd still not gotten past my grief though. The Vietnam War is that red-headed stepchild of US military adventures where the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who served were despised by many for carrying out the orders of the government they'd sworn to serve. I grew up in those days of watching protests on television, opposing the war myself when I was old enough to formulate such opinions as to what our goals were and why we were there. That wasn't enough though: at seven my life was irrevocably changed and no amount of political musing by a teenager would reverse that.
A couple months before Veterans Day 2013, I posed a question to Yahoo Answers in the military section. I'd just learned of the Gold Star Family Lapel Button (it is my avatar here). That pin is awarded by Congress via the Department of Defense to the immediate family members of a fallen servicemember in combat, and may only be displayed by those to whom it was awarded.
A telephone call to my mother revealed that no one in our family had been awarded the pins; indeed, my mother had not heard of it. So I posited the question on Yahoo Answers on how to have that forty-five year oversight corrected.
Within a day I was contacted by the US Army at home about it (funny how they knew my telephone number). The Army had made arrangements with the state's Survivor Outreach Coordinator (a civilian) to make a formal public award of the pins for my family at Bridgeport (NE) Public School during its Veterans Appreciation Day annual event (to which I am invited anyway, both as a veteran and as an elected village official). He drove over four hundred miles from Lincoln to Bridgeport for the event.
On the day of the ceremony, with the school choir and bands playing patriotic music, the school serving the veterans and their families lunch, county and city officials making speeches, a special place in the programme was set aside.
I was called to the dais by the school principal, where the state Survivor Outreach Program Coordinator stood waiting.
He told the assembly why I was on the stage, then read the public law that created the Lapel Button. He then read the citation for the award, and pinned the button to my suit. He also gave me a single gold star service banner (which were proudly displayed during World War II but never seen during the Vietnam War).
The assembled veterans stood as best they could depending on age at attention, and when the pin was placed, saluted. The entire crowd of people (hundreds) then broke into applause.
I made my way back to my seat, where my wife held my head to her bosom to hide my open weeping. I finally had the closure I should have had when I was seven (not seeking attention, but simple recognition that I'd lost my father in terrible circumstances that I could reconcile forty-five years before or any time since).
Today and until April 8 (the day of his funeral) the POW/MIA flag flies from the flagstaff of my home.
In a couple weeks, my wife and I will be off to Alliance, where the Post Office is being rededicated in the name of the son of the president of the Nebraska Gold Star Mothers' Association. He was killed in another military misadventure, the Iraq War.
Like the Vietnam War, the Iraq War was fought over policies now shown to be disingenuous at best. But it was not his mother that formulated those policies, and as I learned in Bridgeport, such a public recognition does indeed help create the closure that was denied in the past.
Like those of my county and village that were in Bridgeport saluting and applauding in support of my own family, I will be there for hers, though I have never met her in person. (I have corresponded with her.)
Whether the purpose of our nation's military adventures is noble or ignoble, those left behind are part of a group that we never wanted to be part of, a group that is ofttimes forgotten in the larger struggles in society of the justice or injustice of a particular war.
Though there are few here that would support our nation's aims or goals in intervening in Iraq (and I certainly don't), her son's loss in that war was not her fault. As she was there for me in Bridgeport, I will be there for her in Alliance. Perhaps these sorts of events, the very public display of the real costs of warfare to those left behind, will leave at least one other person thinking whether we should get involved in another without weighing all other options available first.
But for now, I can lay the pain and confusion and loss of my own father to rest.