Old Glory

The drive to and from work every day takes about two hours of my allotted 24.  The evening drive often finds me as single-minded as a barn-sour mule, just anxious to get home.  I usually spend that time in the morning listening to audiobooks and watching the road, but sometimes something catches my eye and I can’t help but pay attention.

Today it was an elderly man.

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This morning was one of those beautiful, clear, crisp days we get in late fall and winter around here.  The temperatures had dipped just below freezing overnight but there was very little breeze so it wasn’t too bad, but cold enough that the man was wearing a coat.

The reason he caught my eye was that he was standing at the base of a flagpole in the middle of his front yard, and fumbling with a flag.  It’s sad that he stood out to me simply because he was showing respect for our flag, a symbol of freedom around the world.

You don’t see people flying the American flag around their homes nearly as much as in years past.  I saw a lot of them when I was a kid and suspect that flag-waving reached a peak around World War II.  People at that time were fighting for their country; the whole country and much of the world had come together to fight for freedom.  Millions and millions of people died in that war while fighting for freedom to do and say what they wanted.

Someone somewhere paraphrased an old saying that has been attributed to Theodore Roosevelt.  The paraphrase says, “For those who have fought for it, freedom has a flavor the protected will never know.”

Was this man one of those who has fought for that freedom?

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He looked to be around my age, perhaps a little older.  Remember, I only got a glimpse of him.

The man may have been the son of someone we lost in the war, or a grandson, or an uncle.  Perhaps he sat at his dad’s feet as the man told stories about his service. 

My dad told me stories from the time I was old enough to ask questions.  At first they were “softened” for me.  He knew I was too young to handle the true horrors he had survived.  As we both aged, he shared a little more. 

A few years before Dad passed away, he told me accounts that I can see today as vividly as if I were with him, creeping along the streets of the Walled City when our troops returned to the Philippines, watching for snipers poised to take American lives…to kill HIM.  He saw the bodies of men hung by barbed wire passed through their eye sockets.  He heard the bullets flying over his head as he dug feverishly to make a foxhole deep enough to keep himself from becoming one of the many who were killed.  I felt the pain as he told me his close friend didn’t dig fast enough; or picked the wrong place to dig; or moved right when he should have moved left.  Dad’s good friend fell to a bullet he never heard coming.

Millions of Americans and others from other countries have similar stories to tell.

Maybe the man I had glimpsed was one of those.

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As I said, the man I saw looked like he was probably a little older than me.

If so, he could have possibly served during the Vietnam Conflict.  More than a million people died in that conflict.  It was different than WWII.  He would have slogged through lots of mud and steamy heat.  He would probably have wound his way through jungles so thick men couldn’t swing a machete.  He would have seen many men fall to insect-borne diseases, jungle diseases, snake bites, bullets, and land mines.  He obviously survived his time in the military, but his psyche would have been scarred…scarred by memories of men talking to him or others, then disappearing in a roar.  He may have been peppered by bits and pieces of friends.  He could have seen bodies so charred by napalm that they were scarcely recognizable as human beings, and he knew they were the lucky ones.  He could have seen the not-so-lucky ones, skin peeling off, faces burned off, men who couldn’t scream because they had breathed in burning jellied gasoline and scorched their lungs.  Those men prayed for death, prayed for someone to shoot them; to put an end to their agony. 

But this man made it home, albeit with scars, some physical, some mental.

Whereas my dad returned to the states to a hero’s welcome, many veterans of the Viet Nam war were met by jeering crowds yelling, “Baby killer!”, maybe even spitting on him.  Viet Nam was an unpopular war.  Many people disagreed with it, saying it wasn’t actually accomplishing anything except spreading death.

But he may not have known that when he went away.  He may have joined out of a sense of pride or love-of-country.  He may have gone because of pressure from the WWII generation.  He may have gone because he didn’t want to be called a coward, or he may have gone because he was too afraid to risk the wrath of his own country.  Maybe he simply didn’t have enough money to seek refuge in Canada.

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Regardless of which war he was associated with, there he was that morning, struggling to raise the flag.  I have a pretty good idea why he was doing that…pride in his country.  He was proud to live in a country that abolished slavery and pushed for equal rights.  He was proud of a country that had the courage to recognize the rights of blacks, and women, and, well…everyone.  He was proud to live in a country that saw the slaughter of millions of Jews and said, “No more.”  He was happy to live in a country that allowed him to work at whatever job he was qualified for, whether he was born to the underclass or was the son of a president. 

He was proud to live in a country that knows…knows it isn’t perfect, and continues, to this day, trying to make it right. 

The man was raising the flag in his front yard to show his pride in the most nearly perfect country in the world.

God bless America.

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I ran across this piece recently and fell in love with it all over again.  Obviously I wrote it a few years ago while I was still working at New Madrid Bend Youth Center.  Those days are gone but my love for our glorious country and the men and women who have served to keep it free goes on.

Yes, God bless America, and God bless those of you who joined me in serving our great country.

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