They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
* * * * *
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
~ Laurence Binyon, 1914
In memory today of:
Both of my grandfathers, who served in World War I.
My paternal grandfather served as a Marine pilot in France. He left Columbia University a few months’ shy of his diploma (although they later gave it to him anyway) to join up. He flew Curtiss Jennys, like this one ~
(photo @ National Postal Museum, which is funded by the U.S. Government.)
~ out of an airfield like this one:
I have real photographs of him there, with his unit. They flew without parachutes or radar. Upon his return to the United States, he became a charter member of the Quiet Birdmen:
The Quiet Birdmen was founded by seven World War I pilots who, beginning in 1919, regularly met at Marta's Restaurant in Manhattan to share war stories.
In the spring of 1920 the group, which had grown considerably, rented the roof garden restaurant on top of a Manhattan hotel populated principally by elderly residents. They kept the roof for the entire weekend during which they partied quite heartily. They created quite a ruckus on the roof and while going up and down the stairwells and the elevator. Due to the noise, the elderly residents dubbed the group "The Quiet Birdmen". The name stuck and "Ye Anciente and Secret order of Quiet Birdmen" was officially founded in January of 1921.
Source
In 1927, he raced a carrier pigeon from Washington, D.C. to New York to prove the speed of airplanes. The bird lost.
My maternal grandfather served in the Atlantic as a submariner.
My maternal grandfather had more patience with children than a pocketful of saints. He taught me to play hearts at the kitchen table of my grandparents’ farm in Vermont, which sat next to the woodstove. We listened to the Red Sox on the radio, when Ted Williams was still in the line-up.
Neither of my grandfathers ever talked about the horrors they must have witnessed in that terrible "war to end all wars," which killed more than 53,000 American military men and women.
I loved them both very much.
But I did have the chance to know them -- and the chance to be alive at all. Had the flags draping their coffins been placed there in 1918, rather than 1978 and 1962, my family never would have existed. It is not just those who will never grow old that we mourn, but all those who now will never come after them.
In memory today of:
2nd Lt. Robert C. Ransom, Jr. (October 2, 1944 - May 11, 1968)
When Lt. Ransom’s father died in 1986, the obituary in The New York Times did not even mention him.
On May 2, 1968, 2nd Lt. Robert C. Ransom Jr., whom his family called "Mike," wrote to his mom and dad from "a little hooch" somewhere in Vietnam. He described the dangers and rewards of being a platoon leader, of recently losing several men in a minefield, of having the respect of his men. He asked for his Newsweek subscription to be forwarded to a new address, and added in a P.S.: "You might tell any friends you have in Washington to get off their fat asses, quit quibbling, and start talking about ways to end this foolishness over here. Aside from being opposed to the damn war, it really gives me a case that LBJ, who claims to want peace and who says he'll go anywhere any time to talk peace, has taken over a month without being able to find an acceptable site. Anywhere, according to his promise, ought to be 'acceptable.' " The next day Ransom stepped on a mine. He died nine days later. He was 23.
Source
This morning, the residents of the small village where I grew up gathered for the 87th annual Memorial Day Parade. I haven’t lived there since the early 1980s, but I can picture the unfolding day in my mind’s eye down to the grand marshals who, this year, happen to be the parents of the best man at my brother’s wedding. Back in the 1960s, if you were a boy scout or a girl scout or in the school band, you marched. If you were too young, you decorated your bike with rolls of red-white-and-blue striped crepe paper and followed at the end of the parade. (Things haven’t changed much: my own stepchildren decorated borrowed bikes and rode a few years ago, when I took them there for the weekend.) The parade ends at the front of the school I attended from Kindergarten through 12th grade, where speeches and remembrances are offered near the flagpole to the hundreds of villagers who fill the school’s front lawn.
Memorial Day in 1968 was just the same, except that it wasn’t, because just days before, a young man who had attended my school had died in Vietnam.
I never met Mike Ransom. But I did know his parents and the two youngest of his five brothers. Before enlisting, Mike had graduated from Colby College in Maine. This is a picture of him at about the time of his graduation:
From a special issue of the Colby College alumni magazine:
Even as he entered the army in September 1966, Ransom and his parents were seriously questioning the conduct of the war. He told a friend to engage in every anti-war demonstration she could in order to end the war. Nevertheless, he attended Officer Candidate School and was commissioned a second lieutenant of infantry. Like so many others with those credentials, he received orders for Vietnam, arriving in-country on March 7, 1968, at Cam Ranh Bay.
(snip)
On May 3, 1968, Company A was moving into a night ambush position near Landing Zone Sue when a mine detonated. Mike Ransom was hit. Despite severe wounds, he urged his men to remain calm, organizing them into a tight defensive perimeter until they could receive assistance. He refused medical attention until other injured men had been treated.
Subsequently, he was evacuated to a field hospital where his condition deteriorated. He died on Mother's Day, May 11, 1968, his death officially attributed to pneumonia and peritonitis resulting from his wounds.
Mike Ransom's funeral shattered the village where we lived, just as the 3,455 funerals for the young men and women who have been killed in Iraq have crushed their hometowns in grief.
2nd Lt. Robert C. Ransom Jr.’s name is one of more than 58,000 names etched into black marble on Vietnam War Memorial Wall. His is on Line 25 of Panel 58E. I never visit the Wall without rubbing my finger over it, saying a prayer, and shedding a few tears.
Bless the family and friends of 2nd Lt. Robert C. Ransom, Jr.
In memory today of my Dad.
I am the very proud daughter of a Navy pilot and intelligence officer, who graduated from the USNA in 1950 and later taught there. I was born "in the yard" at the USNA (the hospital no longer exists). My birth certificate says "Territory of the United States" on it, because the USNA belongs to the country, and not to Annapolis, MD. My Godfather was also a US Naval pilot.
My Dad was a courageous and kind man. I miss him every single day.
Bless my Dad.
I am so very grateful to the IGTNT diarists and so honored to work on this important series. The IGTNT diaries today have been eloquent and, as always heartbreaking. Please visit each one: monkeybiz; greenies; Sandy on Signal.
In memory today of the 3,455 young men and women who have been killed in Iraq. Bless their families, friends, communities and units, today and every day. They shall not grow old, but they will never be forgotten.