Memorial Day (6): Real people die in wars

The Hattiesburg (MS) American for Memorial Day published sketches of five soldiers killed in Iraq:  Five Pine Belt soldiers honored for service 05/30/05.  The Pine Belt is roughly the lower third of Mississippi except for the Gulf Coast, named for its pine forests.

The five are Sabe Parker, apparently in his 40s, killed recently by a bomb near Haswa, Iraq; Joshua Isaac Bunch, 23, killed in an ambush in Baghdad in 2004; James Anderson Chance III, 25, killed near the Syrian border in 2003; Sean Michael Cooley, 35, killed this year by an IED (improvised explosive device) south of Baghdad; and, Drew Rahaim, 22, who also died this year in Iraq when a road collapsed and threw his vehicle into a canal.

Parker is also featured in an obituary article in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger: Medals given to family of slain soldier by Janet Braswell 05/30/05.  It reports on a memorial service held for him at Hurricane Baptist Church in southern Mississippi.  If memory serves me right, I may have been to that church years ago.  And, as I recall, some of the local residents pronounce the community's name as "Hackin' Creek."

Parker leaves behind a 24-year-old stepson, a 16-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old daughter.  His widow has a broken leg from a traffic accident over two months ago.  She still had to have her injured leg supported by pillows at the service.

The minister, Rev. Curtis Roland, "preached about salvation and heaven," Braswell writes.  Of course.  It's a Baptist Church.  Even at funeral services, it's not unusual for the minister to remind the congregation (hopefully mildly) of their need for salvation.

Maj. Gen. Harold Cross, the adjutant general of the Mississippi National Guard, presented three medals to his family during the service.  Braswell writes:

"Once again we come together in a small community to honor a soldier," Cross said. "It comes to mind that over (1.2 million people) have paid the ultimate sacrifice in our 228-year history that we might be free."

While Parker may not be remembered by future generations, his sacrifice will, Cross said. "What will last forever is what he left for us — the passage of freedom for us to keep," he said.

It struck me in reading that part that Cross has stated well the pain of a family like that.  Parker is not likely to be remembered much by future generations.  None of us are.  He will be remembered in endless Memorial Day tributes as one of the abstract many who died for Freedom and His Country.  But the people who actually remember him as a real person will remember him more specifically.

He's likely to be elevated in the memory of his widow and at least by his younger daughter to a more ideal person than he could ever have been in life.  A very common reaction, and in itself a kind of very personal tribute with a level of meaning that no medal could ever give.

The obituary articles contain traces of the real life he lived.  He worked at the Angie Lumber Company across the border in Louisiana.  He had been in the National Guard for 16 years and served for a while in Bosnia.  He wrestled on the weekends, and was the local champion for 2004 for the cruiser weight division.

The Hattiesburg American article quotes his widow:

"He was into the 'Three Stooges,'" Kitza Parker said. "He loved bluegrass music and tortured me with it. We loved to go out and eat. He loved steaks, but we liked seafood, Chinese, pizza. He was an outdoor-type person. Deer was his main thing. He just liked to fish for the fun of it. If they were biting or not, he didn't care."

Braswell's article says:

He enjoyed hunting and fishing, watching war movies and the History Channel and adored his daughters, Merissa Parker, 16, and 11-year-old Sheliah Parker, family members said.

"The oldest girl is so much like him, he'll never die," said June Mitchell of Columbia, Kitza Parker's aunt.

The people who are giving their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan are real people, not abstractions.  One of the unintended consequences of the all-volunteer army is that far too many people have cometo think of those serving in the military as "somebody else," those people who we "honor" with a sentimental thought now and then.

But war is serious business, not a sentimental abstraction.  And it has real costs for people like  Parker, Bunch, Chance, Cooley, and Rahaim.  How distanced so many people have become from that is shown in one of many ways by the fact that politicians still refer to soldiers as "kids."  Look at the ages of those five men.  They aren't kids.  The casualty lists from Iraq show plenty of people in their 30s, 40s, and older.  It's just one sign of how little attention so many people pay to the people who fight and die in the wars we require them to fight in the name of glorious abstractions.  Or, in the case of Iraq, to deal with "weapons of mass destruction" that didn't exist.

This attitude toward the people who fight America's wars these days is shown in the following maudlin tribute - I guess it's supposed to be a poem - by a country musician named Bruce Brown who had recently taken part in a concert tour for US soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq:

In the Company of Angels

I’ve been in the company of angels
The very best God has to offer this mortal world
I felt no fear
Only hope and a deep sense of comforting faith
I’d wake early and pray for them
A couple of times I cried for them
My heart wells up with pride for them
I’m humbled
My spirit has been lifted simply by being in their presence
I’ve seen true goodness
I’ve been in the company of angels 

Uh, no, you weren't in the company of angels, fool.  You were in the company of human beings like Parker, Bunch, Chance, Cooley, and Rahaim.  People who leave real families behind, people who come back with real wounds, some of them disabling for life.  They're not there to "lift your spirit" or to make you feel good by penning lifeless tributes that make them into inhuman beings who don't bleed when they're shot, who don't die in ambushes or bombings, and don't leave behind real gaps in the lives of those who loved them.

Get your lifted "spirit" back down on the ground, dude, and try to focus for a minute or two or the fact that real people get killed in wars.  Angels don't need your prayers.  The real men and women who fight the wars and the families they leave behind at home do.