ONLY ONE
This entry was posted on 5/26/2008 1:35 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
On this Memorial Day, I've heard lots of stirring speeches made by politicians at cemeteries, and quiet remembrances of veterans who have microphones shoved in their faces, and anti-war spokespeople pleading that we never again send our men and women into harm's way unless absolutely necessary. I've also had big Memorial Day sales commercials blasted at me, and ads for outdoor grilling equipment thrust at me, and I've read the articles about how many veterans pass away each month, both of natural causes and by injuries sustained in war.
But I chose to commemorate this day by sharing a private moment that involved only one.
One of the hardest things asked of combat moms during their children's deployments is to write condolence letters to the parents or spouses of those who have fallen in our son's and daughter's units. Often we do this while our kids are still in the line of fire. Most of the time we did not know the men and women who have died, but we know that our children did, and we know what it would mean to each of us to receive supportive letters from the parents of our kids' buddies, should the worst happen to them.
A condolence letter, in my view, is no place for platitudes. Words like "victory" and "glory" and, to some extent even, "hero," do not necessarily belong in a letter to a grieving spouse or parent. Saying that someone who was the moon and stars to a shattered family, died for his or her country is too lofty, too disconnected with the tragic reality of planning funerals and filing paperwork and breaking the news to family and friends, some of them very young.
Such a loss is deeply personal, you see. Not political.
Marine Lance Corporal Rex Page, of Kirksville, Missouri, was killed by sniper fire on June 28, 2006 in Fallujah, Iraq. He served in my son's platoon--Third Battalion, Fifth Marine, Lima Company, 1st Platoon. Like my son, he was a rifleman, which is the Marine equivalent to army Infantry. A grunt, as they call themselves.
I hope Cpl. Page's (he was posthumously promoted) mom will not mind my sharing portions of the letter I wrote to her and her husband when their son was killed. I thought that by doing so, it would help to remind us all of just why we have a Memorial Day, and why former soldiers and Marines 80 years old still weep.
I started by sharing with her how her son's death had affected my son:
"There was a day, during Dustin's deployment, that I had this queasy awful feeling all day long, and then, he called at a time that would have been three a.m. in Iraq. I knew something terrible had happened, because he never called in the middle of the night his time, and I knew it meant that he was unable to sleep, that he just wanted to hear a voice from home. He did not tell me then what had happened, but I didn't need to ask, because I heard the grief and heaviness in his voice.
"I just wanted to hear news from home," he said. And so we talked about family, and pets, and chatty things that did not matter, but I knew something terrible had happened and suddenly said, "Honey, I just wanted you to know that we never, ever forget about you. Not for one moment, not for one instant. We think about you and pray for you every moment of every day.
"And when I hung up, I sobbed and sobbed and I didn't even know why.
"The next day I heard about your boy, and he was the third 3/5 Marine in three days that week to be killed, but he was the first from my son's platoon, and I was devastated all over again even though I did not know Rex.
"I didn't have to know him, if that made sense."
I went on to say that it was hard to know what to say to a grieving parent, but that I'd decided to tell them what their son's life and death had meant to my son.
"When Dustin first got home," I wrote, "he would not talk to anybody about what had happened to them over there. He was angry and wanted to be alone. He would leave the house for hours. It took him a couple of weeks before he was even able to talk about this with his dad.
"Then, about midnight the night before he went back to Pendleton, I sensed that he was still up. I got out of bed and looked out the kitchen window, and he was sitting out back under the stars with a beer. I went out and joined him. We live on a small ranch in a very remote part of West Texas, and there are a bazillion stars and it is very quiet except for the wind and animals.
"He was glad to see me and we talked of all kinds of things. And then, he started to tell me about the men they had lost--he knew the others, too, but Rex was the only one in his platoon. Of course, he called him 'Page,' as they all do in the Marines. Half the time we moms don't even know the first names of their best buddies. 'Page was a good guy,' he said. 'A really good guy.'
"Dustin told me what a good Marine Rex was. Dustin was a fire team leader on this deployment, and for a while, he had Rex on his team, but another leader sort of took him away--I'm not sure how these things work in the Marines--but Dustin said he was pissed when he lost Rex from his fire team and did his best to get Rex back but was not able to.
"What that tells me, with my knowledge of soldiering, is that your son was such a good Marine to have around that fire team leaders were literally fighting over him--in a good way!
"Dustin said Rex was larger-than-life, funny and goofy and kind, and absolutely dependable in battle. The kind of guy you would want to have in your platoon. The kind of guy you NEED.
"He told me why Rex had enlisted in the first place, and what a terrible loss his death had been to them all, especially so close to their getting to go home, and how angry he was for his buddy.
"When Rex was hit, Dustin was the first member of the platoon to get up to the roof where Rex was. He told me, in a quiet, calm voice under the stars that night, about the heroism of the '21-year old medic' who fought valiantly to save Rex's life. 'He brought him back,' he said.
"And Rex fought too. 'He fought, Mama,' Dustin said. 'He fought so hard to live. He made it all the way to TQ.' That would be Taqqadum Air Force Base.
"It was the first real friend Dustin had lost to war. And he took it hard.
"I just want you to know that your boy was never alone, that his fellow Marines fought with all their hearts to keep from losing him, and that they all grieve, and will continue to do so, for the rest of their lives.
"I want you to know that your son fought bravely and well, that he was liked by everybody, and that he is missed by more people than just his family and friends back home. My son, for one, who has seen more death than anybody ever ought to have seen in a lifetime, much less a young lifetime, is haunted by your son's memory and will never forget him."
I wanted this sweet boy's family to understand how that can be, how it is that their child's memory lives on, so I shared, first, all the immediate Mills family members who were veterans and those who--at the time--were on active duty. (At that time, we had five family members on active duty; three of them have done, so far, six combat deployments to Iraq, and one to Afghanistan.) Then, I told them about an experience my husband, Kent, had in Vietnam.
"My husband is a combat veteran. He was a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam...Kent told Dustin about how, when he was a young lieutenant in Viet Nam, he once sent a squad of men to the stream to refill their canteens with water. They were ambushed by Viet Cong and a young private was killed in the firefight. He was the only one lost from my husband's platoon.
"To this day, when you ask Kent about that boy, his eyes redden and fill with tears. Once, he visited a traveling exhibit of the Vietnam memorial Wall, and brought home a penciled shadow-stencil of that young man's name, which he had not forgotten, not in 30 years.
"Kent told Dustin that for a very long time, he had blamed himself for that young private's death. And then one day he decided that, the best way he could honor that boy's memory was to live a life that brought honor to his name and to his loss, to live a life that young man would have lived if he could have.
"I can tell you that Dustin and the other guys who knew Rex and fought by his side will never forget your son. I know that Dustin and the others will carry the vibrant memory of Rex Page in their hearts for the rest of their lives. And I know that Dustin, for one, will live a life that will bring honor to Rex's memory. He will live a life Rex would have been proud to live. I know because he told me so, under the stars."
I told Rex's parents how, for other Marine families, each homecoming of their loved ones from war is a bittersweet thing, and that I, for one, had wept for the Pages and other bereaved families when my own son had called from Maine to say the unit was on American soil and on their way home to Pendleton.
I told them that they would remain in my thoughts and prayers, and that I would never forget them or their son.
And so I have not.
Rex's mom did write me back, several pages in neat longhand. She told me about her son, and about how the Marines had taken good care of their family throughout the funeral, and how much solace and support they'd taken from their church.
They seemed to be coping as well as anyone can whose entire world has just been ripped apart.
This blogpost is a tribute to all the Rex Page's out there, past and present and future, and to all the families who must endure so much for love of their country.
We've lost more than 4,000 Rex Page's now in Iraq and more than 400 in Afghanistan. I've heard some claim--callously, if you ask me--that such loss doesn't compare, say, with Vietnam, when we lost 58,000, or other wars where so many of our bravest and best gave their lives.
But when it comes to Memorial Day and other days like it, I can tell you that veterans everywhere are not thinking of big numbers. They're thinking of the men and women they knew and served with, laughed and trained with, fought with, and watched die.
And in that case, there is always, always...only one.
