A Veteran's Perspective On Memorial Day

Most Americans know that it’s Memorial Day, and look forward to the long weekend, but few can understand the deep meaning of that day unless they’ve served in the military, or they've had a close family member who did.

I used to be that way.

Now, it’s a little different and as a veteran, I can say it impacts all of us in many ways.

I remember growing up how the thought of such things as that holiday impacted my father, a combat veteran who lost part of his leg — and a part of his soul — in those long ago rice paddies in Vietnam.

He kept an old green footlocker in the attic that held those old memories he just didn’t want to see.

Each year he’d take it down and let my brother and I see those relics that included his Army dress uniform, his Purple Heart medal, Jump Wings, and Combat Infantryman’s Badge, letters he and mom wrote back and forth and certificates.

Treasures to a couple of young Texas boys indeed.

There was also a plastic bag with pieces of twisted metal and a pile of black and white photos he’d never let us see.

He hated that footlocker and everything in it.

One day, in a fit of cursing rage he grabbed the footlocker up by its weathered handle and threw it across the driveway.

“I never want to see that damned thing again,” he raged, slamming the door behind him.

I went outside and took a few things out, a part of me hoping he’d change his mind one day, and another part knowing how vital all of this was for him.

I socked away the black and white photos, the twisted pieces of metal, his Purple Heart and a few certificates and hid them away in a box in my closet.

Time passed...

I grew up, and in a few years graduated from high school and joined the Marine Corps, hoping to find out exactly what I was made of, and in that service I would not only learn this, but form bonds I couldn’t otherwise fathom.

I was a Cold War peacetime Marine for the most part, who did a deployment here and there, the biggest one with Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 365 in 1988.

As we got ready for this, we took in pilots and their mechanics from other squadrons and got ready to sail through the Mediterranean with the U.S. 6th Fleet.

One of the men assigned to our squadron was 1st Lt. Mike Vidusek, who flew the Cobra Attack helicopter.

As a rule, Marine pilots are like big kids, and are often a little quirky, until it’s time to fly, and then they become mission-focused.

VooDoo, as he was known, was like that, and it was not at all odd for him or any of the pilots to hang out in our shop sometimes.

We deployed in March 1988, and spent about six months hitting one port or another or taking part in NATO operations at sea.

I didn’t see most of the pilots unless I needed to, we were in port, or I was on one of their birds, which was rare.

A year later, now Capt. Mike Vidusek would die tragically in a crash in the Med during flight operations off the Spanish coast.

I heard about it on the news.

I was on my way out of the Marines by then, but many of the guys I’d served with were on that same ship, and spent hours looking for the wreckage of his aircraft.

Neither he, nor Capt. Todd Travis, the pilot on that mission, were ever found.

I was not there, but I hurt for those Marines, and I hurt for the dead and their families.

I later served in the Army as part of a military police battalion and experienced more of the same.

The faces, the sounds of those places, and the smell...it all stays with you through every Memorial Day, and every day in between

As I was transitioning out the service for good in 1994, my dad came to visit us in Georgia.

“I wish I’d never thrown out that old footlocker,” he said as he puffed on his cigarette and took a swig of beer.

He was trying to heal, and had reached out to the guys from his unit in Vietnam, and planned to attend a reunion in Tennessee in a few weeks.

I handed over the box of things he thought was gone forever, and saw his gratitude.

He picked up the bag with the twisted metal pieces, and I looked down realizing they were not only fragments from the landmine that nearly killed him, but a piece of his high school ring.

He showed my the photos of himself in Vietnam, and his buddies standing near the corpses of their enemies.

I understood...finally.

Years would pass, and his demons would stick around, usually appearing in his dreams.

He was unable to put the terror of Vietnam behind him completely, but that is what war does to us all.

It just sticks with you forever, and if you’re a veteran then you soon understand that every day is Memorial Day.

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