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May 20, 2023

COLUMN/PERSPECTIVE: Remembering veterans, including those without a gravestone

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Today is Memorial Day, the day we honor those who died in the service of our country. We do that one day each year. A friend was remarking to me the other day we have only one day for those who gave their lives but set aside full months for other causes.

Admittedly, the names of those who died are often etched in stone and in more than one place. Naturally, their names are on grave markers in cemeteries and on war memorials in city squares or similar places. The names of the more than 58,000 who died in the Vietnam War are also etched in black stone on the Vietnam Memorial wall.

But some don't have any of that. When Vonette and I visited the Fredericksburg National Battlefield years ago, we were at the scene of some of the worst carnage of the Civil War. Union Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside threw the Army of the Potomac against Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, which blocked Burnside's plan to drive on Richmond.

The Union troops crossed the Rappahanock River and attacked Gen. James Longstreet's rebels that were dug in on Marye's Heights. The No. 1 rule is take the high ground, and Longstreet had it.

As the Union soldiers stormed up the hill, they were met by what must have seemed a solid wall of lead mini-balls. After it was over, Lee had another victory and Union casualties would double those of the Confederacy.

In 1865, the U.S. established a national cemetery there and buried the dead from the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania Courthouse and the Wilderness. Of the 15,243 Union soldiers interred, only 2,473 were identified.

When we walked the grounds, there were some low stone markers, some with four digit numbers and, usually, a single digit below. As I stood puzzling over all these graves with twos, threes, sixes and other numbers, Vonette read the park guide. She's always the one who reads the park guide while I wander around trying to figure things out, usually failing.

Those smaller numbers indicate the number of unknown soldiers buried in each grave. Grave 2473 has four bodies, 4521 has one and the highest is the 12 in grave 3078.

Some other graves had initials on them or the home state perhaps gleaned from a uniform. Some of those have been identified by researchers matching military records with those scraps of information.

The most famous grave of the unknown is the one at Arlington National Cemetery, where sentries from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Regiment, or the Old Guard, walk guard every day in full dress uniforms with their taps ringing as they take 21 steps each way. They stand guard around the clock in what amounts to a never ending Memorial Day. It began with the remains of one unknown World War I soldier, but now there are three resting in the marble tomb that serves as a symbol for the missing and unidentified from all our nation's wars.

The Civil War was the nation's second bloodiest with 214,938 dead compared to the 291,557 from World War II.

In all of our wars, we have people missing in action including from the jungles of Vietnam. In 1973, there were 2,464 unaccounted for from the war. By October 2022, the number was down down to 1,582 with 488 deemed unrecoverable and searches still underway for 1,004.

A few years ago on July 4, I met an Army officer — a captain, I think — who had been on temporary assignment to Laos. He was on one of the 10 teams that go into Southeast Asia each year looking for the remains of missing servicemen.

He told me they had gone to the suspected scene of an Air Force fighter that had crashed with a pilot and navigator aboard. They worked for days in the hot, muggy jungle, fighting mosquitoes. They dug and sifted soil hoping to find a fragment that could be sent back for DNA analysis.

Finally, they found a fragment of suspected human bone, and the captain said, everyone was jubilant as they bagged it. He said it was one of the most moving experiences of his career and possibly his life. Because the tests had not been completed and was still months away, he declined to tell me who the team had been searching for.

That was just from Vietnam. The Department of Defense says there are 88,000 still unaccounted for from all wars.

On this Memorial Day, they’re still out there somewhere, and God bless those who are trying to find them. They have their names on lists somewhere but not on a monument like those in front of the old Glynn County court house, at Veterans Memorial Park or in cemeteries. They don't get a flag today, and at observances they’re remembered usually only with a display of that dour black-and-white POW-MIA flag.

Someone still misses many of them, but some have been gone so long their memories have faded. The remaining families of some were born decades after they gave the lives for our country.

Some died of accidental injury or illness, some died in the blinding fire and deafening noise of violent combat. Some died without an ounce of fear while others died frightened to the marrow of their bones. Some never knew what hit them.

They died in war. Let's pray that they’re resting in peace even if its in the soil of some dark, distant jungle.

Many have no graves where we can plant a flag in their memory, but today every American flag flying anywhere in the world honors them.

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