Thinking about Memorial Day
By Michael Ledwith
May 28, 2023
In “The Great War and Modern Memory,” Paul Fussell, a combat veteran of WWII, reviewed the literature and art created by the experiences endured by those who fought during the first World War and wrote about how the shock of millions being killed by high explosives and machine gun bullets affected how we think about the world even today.
In another book, War, he did the same for WWII.
A more personal and poignant examination of the literature: he was wounded during the war, serving as a twenty-year old lieutenant in the 103rd Infantry Division in France, By then the lyricism of “Flanders Fields” and the ironies found in comparing nature to the moonscape of trench warfare that were replaced in novels and poetry by descriptions of being a very small part of a gigantic, remorseless, efficient machine that cared not for which way the poppies blew, but concentrated on the efficiencies of killing and processing death on an industrial scale.
As in the poem, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, below.
Our recent wars are more personal. Squads fighting against squads. The very specific, murderous violence of an IED. Small outposts in the middle of nowhere, with soldiers living medieval lives for weeks at a time.
The Ukraine War a seeming return to the Ypres Salient.
Artillery, not IEDs, the primary killer. Drones carrying small anti-personnel bombs targeting individual soldiers revolutionizing modern warfare between modern states.
Echoing the primitive bombing by WWI aviators from biplanes leaning over their cockpits and dropping grenades into trenches.
On this Memorial Day there are thousands of young men and women walking amongst us who have gone through it all. For whom the day is not symbolic, but a time to remember people they knew who were killed in action.
A major difference between them and those who served in most of the last few American wars: those who served are all volunteers.
They may have read the poem below, stark and dispiriting, but volunteered anyway.
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell:
From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
“A ball turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24, and inhabited by two .50 caliber machine-guns and one man, a short small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved with the turret; hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the fetus in the womb.
The fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose” — Jarrell’s note accompanying his poem.
Recently I toured several Civil War battlefields: Shiloh, Chickamauga, Franklin, and Vicksburg.
They were all beautiful, haunted places. Thin places, as in the Celtic tradition where the separation between then and now, the living and the dead, are so narrow you can feel a distinct presence, as through a sheet.
Memorial Day began after the Civil War.
Over 600,000 Americans died during those four years. The former President of Harvard,
Drew Gilpin Faust, wrote an extraordinary book, ‘This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War’ about the effect on our nation of that enormous death toll.
So many died, affecting so many other millions.
Mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, wives, children, friends and on and on through the generations of memory.
Most will observe Memorial Day and pay respect generally. For those who experienced a direct loss, we all realize that if love could have saved them, they would not have died.
In the photo, you can see the ball turret sticking out from the belly of this B-17. Interesting that barrels of the .50cal machine guns are pointing straight down.
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Frequent contributor Michael Ledwith is a former bag boy at Winn-Dixie, who worked on the Apollo Program one summer in college. A former U.S. Army officer, he ran with the bulls in Pamplona and saw Baryshnikov dance ’Giselle’ at the Auditorium Theater. Surfer. Rock and roll radio in Chicago. Shareholder, Christopher’s American Grill, London. Father. Movie lover—favorite dialogue: “I say he never loved the emperor.”
Comments 24
Always the saddest day of the year.
Growing up, my father (WWI Vet) always took us to the Veteran’s cemetery to see the graves of some of his friends. I never liked doing that and couldn’t wait to get out of there and go back home.
Coming back from Vietnam in 1966 I went to our local Vet’s cemetery to visit two friends and understood my father a little better.
whenever i think of the Civil War battlefields, I think of the battlefields as American farms, and the hogs coming out at night to disembowel the wounded. Today we can clearly hear the race hustlers demanding great sums for slavery “reparations” as they ignore the Union dead. but we can’t hear the screams of the dying Union and Confederate soldiers. And we don’t hear the grunting and squealing of the hogs.
What other country sacrificed so many lives to end slavery?
Brilliant observation, John.
After thinking about it, I have come to the conclusion that we don’t hear the grunting and squealing of the hogs because they have become refined. They wear expensive suits, speak smoothly, and reside in the Swamp.
My dad flew 34 missions over Germany as a ball turret gunner. He then returned home, got a job, worked hard 40 hours every week to support a family. I am thankful that he made it home and honor those heroes who were not as fortunate.
Thom Serafin’s father was a bomber pilot. I’ll tell his story on Memorial Day
My great uncle was a tail gunner. When he came back from the war, he was “excitable.” He did well most of the time, but the occasional plane from the developing ORD would sometimes impel him to try to gather everyone under the dining room table.
What a great piece that gives us a clearer picture of our soldiers’ endurance through the horrors of war. We owe them so much. My sister’s father-in-law was a B-24 pilot. He never shared much about his time in the Pacific. Like so many others who returned, his memories were his own.
Their memories are there own. Well said.
Their memories are their own. Well said.
In this story there’s a comment indicating in the last few wars all who served were volunteers, which is true, but which might make a person think there were no volunteers in prior wars. After High School graduation in the 1950’s my father’s friends were getting drafted and being sent to fight in the Korean war. My dad was hearing stories of our troops suffering in freezing weather in Korea, and he really had no desire to kill anyone. Dad heard that if he enlisted before being drafted (as many friends had been) instead of having to fight in Korea he would might be able to choose a job in which he could avoid fighting. So he enlisted with the idea his mechanical skills could help him get a job as a tech school instructor….this idea worked for him, he did so well in tech school he was immediately offered a job teaching aircraft wiring, at a base in Amarillo Texas. By the time his position as an instructor ended, the Korean war was over, or almost over. At that time his enlistment period was about over, and he was told if he re-enlisted his next assignment would be at a station in the artic circle, if I remember correctly, in Alaska. He had heard terrible things about that base, so he just did not re-enlist.
My dad was a very good mechanic, loved our country tremendously, and I know he did his very best to ensure the electricians he trained received the best training possible. I really miss my dad, but I’m afraid all the non-sense about how terrible our country is would have driven him mad.
I lost a friend in Vietnam. Mike Kelly had a baseball scholarship to University of Detroit. Mike arrived in Vietnam on Good Friday and was dead by Easter Sunday, 1969. God bless our heroes.
I am retired from the military, and the Veterans of WWII were always my heroes growing up. A good Friend’s Dad was a Ball Turret Gunner on a B-17. When he got to England, they told him 12 missions and he was done- then it went to 24, then it went to “the duration”. I will never know where those young men got the courage to get back up into those planes for another mission, knowing that about one out of two wouldn’t be coming back. My Dad and the men and women of the WWII generation saved the world, and we could never pay the debt we owe them.
My dad was a B24 bombardier in the Pacific. Skinny little 18 year old doing missions; some 12 hours long. He told us kids a few things but not a lot. Once he told me that it still bothered him a lot about the number of people he killed. He drank a bit too much after that.
Several years ago I read Stephen Ambrose’s book “The Wild Blue.” It’s about George McGovern and his stint as a B24 pilot. Indirectly, it explained a lot about what dad went through.
Studs Terkel’s “The Good War” is a real eye-opener about the people overseas and on the home front. I wonder every day how they did it.
“There but for the Grace of God go I”.. “It’s the luck of the draw.” Almost fifty years later Memorial Day is Tough. As a young hoping to be Engineer I left the Uof I in my Sophomore year to volunteer in the Marines. That’s a totally different story which i won’t bore you with today. but God has guided my life even as I prepare to have the evil affects of Agent Orange cut from my body in two days…
But, as we used to say in Vietnam (we called it Viet Nam when I was ther in ’66 – ’67) “It’s the luck of the draw…”
I came out of Viet Nam in December of 1967 on a C-130 from DaNang to Okinawa with one other living Marine (other than the flight crew) and 23 silver caskets. Imagine going home for Christmas – out of Viet Nam forever- and starring at 23 silver caskets thinking – “Luck of the Draw” BS – “There but for the Grace of God go I!” Now I have a very, very, very hard time with Memorial Day Ceremonies – I avoid them like the plague – “Survivor’s Guilt” “It sucks a big one “as we used to say… So, John, thanks for letting me realize someone other than me gives a care about my brothers – although from my Dad’s era – and knows that you don’t “Celebrate” Memorial Day – you remember… May God have Mercy and Love for all those who gave somuch more than we.
Welcome home brother.
Glad you’re still on the green side of the grass.
Get through that procedure and let us know how you’re doing.
Semper Fidelis!
A quote from historian Stephen E. Ambrose re: the Greatest Generation “America’s citizen soldiers knew the difference between right and wrong and they didn’t want to live in a world where wrong prevailed. So they fought and won, and all of us now living and those yet to be born should be forever profoundly grateful.”
Thank you Glenn. It’s always been about good vs. evil. God willing, good will prevail.
My father was on a carrier in the Pacific, and told me about the Kamikazes. “Victory at Sea” had the best description of those battles- “American sailors fighting to live against Japanese pilots fighting to die. , .”
Last year, I spent June 6th on Omaha Beach in Normandy. I also went to the Military Cemetery in Luxembourg, Patton is buried there and the Military Cemetery in Normandy. Teddy Roosevelt Jr. is buried there. I cried at both places.
I then spent late November at Pearl Harbor. Such sad places that show how great that generation was. I often wonder if all that happened today, do we have the desire and will to defend our great country? I fear we do not. We are too busy trying to idolize the Dylan Mulvaneys and Drag Queens of our day. God help the USA because most of our heroes are dying off.
As our Marxist Democrats conveniently rewrite our history they ignore the sacrifice of the thousands of white soldiers who fought and died to end slavery. Our Marxists have demanded the removal of Civil War memorials to ensure the erasure of any factual reference to that conflict. Our Marxists have also succeeded in villainizing Republican President Abraham Lincoln who had to declare war on Southern Democrats to force the end of slavery. Democrats fought to preserve the institution of slavery much as they are battling to ingrain their Marxist beliefs into our educational systems. It is far easier to indoctrinate the young with books than to force them to convert at gunpoint. Isn’t it funny how the mass migration from blue states to red states is also conveniently ignored by mass media? We are now seeing the relocation of people in this country due to political beliefs. I’m sure people made similar moves prior to the Civil War. The Democrat party speaks of “saving our democracy” even as they attempt to destroy it. Hopefully history doesn’t repeat itself. We shouldn’t have to refer to the Civil War as “The First Civil War”.
My Dad spent his war in the engine room of a convoy escort to England and Murmansk.
My uncle waded ashore on islands from Entiewok to Iwo.
I spent 15 months in the jungles is Southeast Asia.
My youngest boy was “in the sandbox”and in Baghdad on day 2.
I’m afraid we’ll always have veterans to mourn.
Too soon we forget the price of freedom
The use 0f the word, “haunting.” I have been to the Little Bighorn Battleground National Monument and Shanksville, Penn., on the 5th anniversary of 9/11. Both experiences left me feeling like I had experienced hallowed ground. It is hard to pick the right words. Maybe there are none.