I wrote this letter six or seven years ago and posted it on Memorial Day my first and second years here.
Here's hoping there will be no need for further sections between this day and my last.
Once upon a time (2004, I think), I took a friend's Memorial Day tribute as a skeleton (largely for the military conflicts -- Dave majored in history, I in English) and wrote a letter to a soldier.
Not any specific soldier, mind. I never physically sent it to anyone. I published it online -- which is how I found it, a few years later.
I wrote the letter while much of the country still supported the Iraq War — while I still did. I believed the president when he talked about Iraq's WMDs, and I believed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld when he said the difficult part would be over in a matter of months. I wrote it as a romanticist, ignoring many of the reasons for these conflicts and mindful mostly of the simple patriotism many volunteers must have had in their heads and hearts when they signed up.
Seven years after Bush declared war, we are still at war. And six years after I wrote this letter (edited for various reasons), I am still waiting to thank each person who has served.
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For the soldier, whose service was nameless, is selfless, and ever shall be timeless.
To a soldier, 1775-2010:
Whether because you wanted to rebel, to take a stand against tyranny, or to claim your own piece of glory and history, you fought and bled for me. You died for me.
And I do not know your name.
Many in this country you never met know precious little of the war that granted your people, our people, freedom. I have lived where you fought, and I have walked the river whose banks you and yours and they and theirs stood on as the shots echoed among the trees, whose waters you and yours and they and theirs ran red as the muskets claimed lives at their whim.
A poor family you were in possession, but not in spirit. Your pride was rich and vivid, and your courage matched its stride as you stood up and volunteered your life for ... a country yet to be. Colonies, then. And as you spilled your blood and it ran that river red, it became the ink in Fate's pen as a new country's name was written for the first time, for your time, for our time: The United States of America.
Your life ended before your new country's began, but it was a noble end, a courageous end, a necessary end. The rules of war then are as now: first, that young men die; second, that you nor anyone else can change the first.
As the river slowly cleared of blood, after the bodies were cleared (and ammunition and other supplies removed), there was more fighting, but not from you. You'd done your job -- you'd taken a bullet for freedom, for another man, for our future. And years later, the tears of your mothers, of your families, still burned stripes down their faces as they looked down at your graves, then up to the stars in the sky for answers all knew would not be coming.
They faced a new life, a new country, and a new freedom ... yet without so many of those who fought to the death to guarantee it.
Your name and much about you is lost to antiquity, but your deeds are as visible now as they were when the blade on your bayonet found its target in the chest of a British soldier, of a Hessian mercenary — of your enemy.
(Some viewers may object to some of the images or statements in these videos. Discretion is advised.)
Thank you for serving.
A few years later, this nation's soil saw subsequent skirmishes. A country in many ways yet infant fought again and, though not alone or principally targeted, emerged still standing, still breathing, still a nation on this Earth along with so many others. And you fought ... again.
It was not to give me my freedom this time, nor to secure you yours, but to ensure it for both of us. But the fight was just as real, just as bloody, just as important to our country's history -- to the two of us, to the whole of us.
Again your bayonet found its way through ribs identical to yours into the heart of a man who looked like you but was not lucky that day.
Again your bullets charged through that same enemy as Fate herself ordering, propelling, personally driving that small, gray ball through the muscle, through the breath, through the lifeblood and the heart of that enemy before, perhaps, leaving it to inflict pain on another.
Again you killed, turned the ground red and then found your final patch of America, consecrating a small area with your blood.
It was not for fame that you handed your life over to a new country's protective forces. It was not for glory, or honor, not the chance to shoot another man. You believed then, as you believed when you held your own mortality in your hand and watched your life pour out of your body and stain that mud, that some among us were called to ensure the freedom of others -- even if it meant your life. You did not shirk this duty; you stood up and said you would take it as the precious, dutiful position it was. You would strive to be what your country needed, and historians and maps show your success.
And still I know nothing more about you than that you were. As a collective you are now, in history, the Unites States Armed Forces.
I do not know your name, I do not know your rank, I do not know your serial number.
I do not know your home, your previous occupation, or if you left your children without a father (or a mother) when all was said and done.
All I need to know is that I have you to thank for my freedom.
Thank you for serving.
You were called upon again, at the bottom of this then-teenage country, to defend your freedom, her freedom, our freedom, my freedom. You and your family risked your lives to ensure mine now. Knowing you might die, knowing you might never live to see your country again, you charged forth to make this land secure for all her people.
The war was not so easy this time, nor did you have the allies you'd had before. Many more of your fellow soldiers died at the hand of an enemy more fierce, but ultimately doomed to the fate of so many others: defeat. Your force met, your force equaled, your force surpassed and your force claimed land for your country and your people; my country and my people.
It was an educated decision, not one based in the desire to see how many men you could kill in a day.
It was the realization that some men must volunteer their lives to ensure that so many others are kept safe from that hand you risked holding every day you fought.
It was a hand that forcefully gripped men you had known for years ... some no more than teenagers, some veterans of a conflict some 20 years before. One or two had tales to tell of their grandfathers' going hand-to-hand against the Britain Empire's finest and coming out unscathed. Some war stories had been passed down from the now-departed. Some ended with young eyes spellbound by an old stump where a hand or arm had been.
And for those who had fallen, for those who had risen because of them, and for those who had yet to do either, you fought. Every charge you made, every bullet you sent to find an enemy body, every time you saw our flag waved you knew might be your last.
And still I do not know your name. I would not know you if I were shown your picture; if I read of your exploits, I would not be able to say "Oh, yeah, I know him." I know nothing of you but that you won, and a nation again challenged emerged victorious -- scathed, but victorious. And once again, her people were safe.
Thank you for serving.
A different call it was in the middle of that century, as a country rose up against itself. A defining question would be answered: Can a country once divided by blood, sweat, tears, bullets and itself ... withstand its own brutality? That question was answered five years later as a nation emerged badly hurt, but still her mouth sang to your fife and beat with your drum. Still her flag was held up to say, "We are here, and we will not be defeated."
The enemy, this time, was your brother.
And when it counted, you triumphed over your brother and set a people free, knowing it might mean ending your life but knowing, more importantly, that it might mean beginning another's life. Again you heard the call to serve your country, my country, our country -- and you did.
Your brother before the war became your target during it, and your father was forced to make that decision no parent should ever face. And in remembering that, sometimes, to play the hero at the end, one must play the villain once, you sent your brother to an enemy's final resting spot: beside his father, your father, in a cemetery of the fallen but not forgotten.
You came back home a shell of yourself, and having seen what your own hands could do, you vowed that day what they would never do again, as you traded an instrument of war for an instrument of peace. You made a new life for yourself in the name of life itself. And when anybody asked why you had spent so much time and effort to become a doctor, you looked them in the eye and said only this: "In the war, I took lives. Now I save them."
And today we are here because of it. We are here because you, soldier, though I know not your name nor much else of you, risked your life, your body, your livelihood to ensure that so many others might know the freedom you had known so long. And in the end, a people are free and your deeds, as a whole, as the military of our country, forever remembered.
Thank you for serving.
Your life was and is dedicated to serving this country. I saw that when you responded to a call to go overseas and kill the evil power that could, and probably would, have spread farther if not for your selfless bravery. You charged, and your blood was spilled on the farms and streets, on the countrysides and in the arms of your fellow soldiers. You were killed by snipers, by tanks, by machine guns and by disease your government would not let be spoken of, but your sole aim, duty and cause was the same: protect, uphold and maintain freedom. You stood by with your fellow soldiers ... some you felt you never really got to know -- because if you did, you'd have seen they weren't allowed to be fighting because they were disabled, or they were too young, or they were too old, or they were your sisters, not your brothers.
You watched them die and they watched you die, and in the end you lost your best friend in that field in southern France.
And 50 years later, as your old eyes saw that field as a cemetery, you watched as tiny legs walked from cross to cross or star, young eyes mesmerized by the row upon row of perfect, white emblems of one life lost for one cause, young parents guiding their babies along where a younger you once had no time to think of babies or how perfect anything was.
And for no reason that day, some phantom force pulled you to an especially ragged area of the landscape, far from where the crosses were telling one of history's silent stories, and not knowing quite what was pulling your tired, beleaguered body along lo these 80 years of your life, you found the means to recognize that unlucky soul and his remains, dead but not forgotten.
You left your Purple Heart pin on the ground there in silent thanks to your brother-in-arms, who got in front of you to get a better angle on the enemy just as a bullet was coming toward you.
That bullet had found his chest, not yours, that day.
Fate had meant to bring you, not him, back with her that day.
You have told that story exactly once since that day, and your grandchildren, learning about this war 50 years later, now find out just how close their Grandpa came so many years ago to being one memory in his wife's mind instead of dozens in theirs.
You had lost many friends, many brothers to that Great War, and ordinarily they were buried in graveyards by the local citizens. And you wanted a proper burial for him then, but you could not find the body, and your unit had to press forward to meet that same enemy again who had taken the life of your friend. And in your mind forever after that had been "I must ... I will find him again and thank him for my life." You paused by his as-yet-unmarked grave that day and remembered not a fearless man who always asked for the most difficult missions but a man just as you had been: scared, worried, homesick, hungry, dirty -- determined. And just as unsure of himself as you were, his desire to right that one ultimate wrong was all he needed to charge and, ultimately, accept his death before the bleeding could be stopped. And as you somehow, 50 years later, find through some unseen force the place war buried him so long ago, your heart can stop bleeding, stop hurting for the man who gave you life as you bring closure to his.
And you did your duty: you answered a call in the dead of the night and left your country to go fight in another. Today many of us cannot imagine what it must have been like to abandon everything you had known to go overseas and take a bullet for a people you had never met, but who have not forgotten you since.
And so, in a then-emerging age of communication and news, you are immutably and for eternity enshrined in history's annals. The telegraph of your death, then or later, survives. Your picture is not lost to history now; no, whether it was your desire or not, you are as much a part of history as anyone else in the world.
I have been to the graves of your fellow soldiers.
I have stood at the cross marking the grave of that man who joined his country's Army in 1917 because the cause was right in his heart enough to entrust a growing family to his young wife and oldest son: seven when he left, nine when he became the man of the house.
I have walked the crosses in the graves in France where your friends, your leaders, your men are laid to rest for eternity.
I have read the names of every man buried in that cemetery in Oise-Aigne, France; where that one man rests, so do his comrades-in-arms, though he knew some not until he met them in that final resting place.
And still, though I know your cause, I know your desire, I know your final resting place, and I know your victorious result, I know not your name but one: United States Armed Forces.
Thank you for serving.
Another call came, this one sooner than the first, and demanding more yet. The evil that had been thought dead was reincarnated, his targets many and more varied than before. In the bloodiest conflict since four score years before, your duty was the same: Protect, uphold and maintain the freedom you had and others had seen stolen from them. Blood spilled by that evil surpasses all imaginations today, and the reasons are no easier to believe.
And in the face of certain death, at times, when you were told "Half of you men I see before me today I will not see again" ... you fought.
So many miles from home, your convictions were as strong there as they have ever been, as you saw the task all too clearly: Destroy this evil and restore to its victims the freedom that had been theirs.
You were victorious at last, after seeing more blood shed, more life and innocence lost, in more horrific ways each day than any human should ever have to experience. You did not choose to fight this time, but neither did you complain. You were chosen. You knew the task at hand, and whatever your previous life's calling, you answered this call and you answered this call with strength.
And when it was done, you returned home to a new country with more heroes than before: Your magazines of bullets, your parachutes, the riveting on your bombers and spy planes were the handiwork of your wife, your daughter, your mother.
Your fellow Americans.
They recognized the call to arms, and when they could not be with you fighting evil on the front lines and in the skies, they worked until they knew you were as well-prepared as a mother can make her son. And you were prepared, and you fought well, and you won.
I can know your name now, and I can look upon your face, upon your tomb, upon your future. I can read about what you did. I can watch a video of trench footage, of your fellow soldiers liberating so many people. Some things you saw are lost to time because the pain struck you as deeply as anything else this world can throw at a person. And it was too great. And all I can do is thank you for doing it and doing it as it needed to be done.
Now I can know.
I can know what state that fighter pilot was from, and that he left a wife and four children behind when his plane was shot down by anti-aircraft guns.
I can know that the man in that paratrooper suit was the youngest son of a lawyer and an author, and that they lost five sons to that evil.
I can know, as that colonel held one of his men as that man died before his eyes, that his mind went back not to a proverbial son but to the son who was born dead, 20 years before, to a young cadet and his young wife. I can know that holding that soldier during his final breaths gave his commanding officer, at last, closure. He was holding a man, a boy who could as easily have been his child as the child of a Texas couple whose son enlisted on his birthday in 1943 and was twenty years old on that day in 1945 when he died.
I can know your name, soldier. But what I also know is that your work is not the work of one man or 10 men but a nation standing behind its men and women as they silenced that evil and returned to a country changed forever.
Thank you for serving.
Again you were called, and to a country so small and in that same thought no different from any other you, we, had fought for. You saw not familiarity in the swamps, fields and forests of that nation but an alien landscape. But you did not buck from the task at hand. You fought, you bled and you died, and you are remembered today.
You were in love then with a girl whose parents were as opposed to that conflict as to anything else in the world — including your relationship with her. Against their wishes, knowing your number might get called, but knowing also that love waits for nobody and you could not assume that you would be able to hold her the next day, you asked her to be your wife.
For three blessed weeks you woke up to her, came home to her and went to sleep with her. But all things in life do not end happily ever after, and as you had predicted, your number got called. And so she was left mostly alone, estranged from parents who could find not one redeeming quality in their son-in-law and would not hide that fact. Her friends thought her a fool for marrying so young -- for marrying someone who might not come back alive.
Two months later, she wondered if you had gotten the letter she'd sent you. Your unit had been moving quickly, and the supply chain was not always reliable. Had you heard about her doctor visit? Did you know you were now fighting for one more person, as yet unborn? That child was born to a widow, and one who did not try to find another husband to replace the true love she had lost to a mine. That child, like many, grew up with a mother strong enough to be two parents -- she had to be.
Hundreds of times, your firstborn had to hear "Where is your daddy? What does he do? What does he look like?" And sometimes your child couldn't answer because of the pain; sometimes because a picture did not suffice; sometimes because the thoughts would not form words to be an answer. To your child, you were sometimes no more than a name; you were not there and could not be there because you had given your life to your cause.
And I can know your name. I can look at your picture, I can read your story, and I can meet your children. And again my dilemma is this: Though I can celebrate what you did, how you failed and how you succeeded, you are, have always been, and will always be about what you and your comrades did together.
Thank you for serving.
Half a world away and from a smaller people, but an equally important cause, you again took a plane, a boat, or a submarine to defend freedom. You did not return whole in mind or body. And a country perhaps still reeling from the after-effects of that most bloody war in Europe did not respond as it had before. You did your duty and did not always come home to an appreciative crowd. From a country so much of which was visibly opposed to your task to a country so visibly opposed to much of what you are, were, and stood for, you traveled. At times, you wondered if the end would ever draw near. Sometimes it did, all too soon in the dead of night as you were attacked in your sleep. And when you returned to your homes, to your families, sometimes you did not return to your lives. And sometimes you never returned but to the dust we all eventually return to.
In many, this did not inspire the honor, the ultimate justice, the sense of purity other causes have engendered. But in your heart, I saw the same desire that shone in the hearts of those 30 years before you, when your fellow soldiers went to Europe. The scenes of this fight were different; instead of fields and country sides, instead of farmhouses and signs in French, were rice paddies and jungles, straw huts and some language that at first was utterly indecipherable to you. The cause was the same, to you: Right a wrong. You did everything short of leading a one-man charge into the heart of the enemy, and when you came home, you were not given a hero's welcome.
Much about that conflict is still debated, but in the end these facts are left standing as truth: You risked your life for country, for your fellow citizens, and for those you knew you had to protect even as they sometimes fought against you. You were given a task, and you did what you could. What you could not do was attempted with equally strong resolve, determination, and heart.
Your best friend, who enlisted with you that day in 1967, left that country neither alive nor at all. And since that day, your mind has haunted you because it needs to know -- you need to know -- what became of him. And occasionally you see someone with your best friend's eyes, nose and cheeks and wonder if an American sympathizer took him in, understanding that his gun, his grenades and, ultimately, his fists were not meant for her but those who would oppress her.
There is a wall in Washington, D.C. On it are engraved the names of those killed while serving their country. And seeing that wall, running my fingers across those represented sometimes only by a first name, middle initial and last name, and looking at the tributes ... some silent, some spoken, some raw emotion ... touched me that day in May seven years ago as much as anything has touched me before or since. I am lucky. Your commanding officer, General Hunter, served his country with you and came back to his wife and children. I knew him. On that day in Washington, I met so many who did not meet that fate. And by so much as touching their names, or by looking at the letters or pictures or flowers or teddy bears or baby clothes left there, I met you as well, soldier. I did not see a name I had heard before on that wall, and yet I met you. I know you. I know you because you served.
Thank you for serving.
Nineteen years ago, the call was given yet again to rise up against a tyrant and brutal man who had laid his iron fist down upon a tiny country with strong, but few, citizens. Though few of your number lost their lives to that cause, you remember it, and I remember it, with pride. This time, new evil tried to take over a country rich in a resource that new evil desired more strongly than much else. You did not let him keep it. And when he said "If I cannot have this, nobody can," you took that power from him as well. You put out the flames he had started, and you returned victorious.
And when you came back from that tiny country, you did not hang up your helmet for the last time. You did not feel this was your last hurrah. And to that tiny nation, you did not say "Goodbye" but "I'll see you later." You meant to see it people later, and on later nonviolent missions, you did. And each time you come back knowing that your duty will not be over until you are unable to do it.
I have met you. I have learned with you, and I have shaken your hand. I have argued with you, laughed with you, chased you, discussed everything under the sun with you. And if there is one thing I have learned from you it is that while individual accomplishments can be and are revealed, lauded, hailed, and admired, everything you did, you did as part of a team. And that is why today I remember you not by your rank or by your home state or your position in the armed forces, but for your response to that call.
Thank you for serving.
Now that call has come again. And this time, as has happened before, opposition has not hidden. It is not silent, at times not respectful, and it shows little sign of leaving. And in the midst of this, you have answered the call again. You have answered it just as you did more than 230 years ago: with pride, with honor, with courage and with the courage of your convictions. And you will come away from this as you have so many times before: changed and proud. The cause will be argued, the battles will be fought, and the honor will remain yours.
I remember going clubbing with you the night before you were to report to basic training. I know the desire is as strong now as it was that night for you. And when your call came a few weeks later, it was not just because of your wife and child that you answered it with pride and courage but for those two same people who are your life. In your life are three sources of pride: your duty, your wife and your son. All you do is born of all three sources. That pride in your heart will guide you to victory over a people many of whom fight because if they do not, they are executed. You knew that if you did not sign up to rid this world of a tyrant, someone else would. They have done so before, and they will do so as long as the call comes. But you also knew that you could help. And for you, the ability to help must come with the effort to do so or the whole of it is a waste.
You have come back from there. And you have gone back there and come back again. And you will go back again if need be. And when all is said and done, when the task before you is completed, when you come back to your country, my country, our country, I will have but these words to say to you:
Thank you for serving.