Good Men?

WERE THEY GOOD MEN?
November 2000

I received a trial subscription to a magazine last week called; "Civil War Chronicles". I've always been interested in the upheaval that was our national nightmare and a few summers ago finally had the opportunity to visit Gettysberg and experience the hills and roads and history of that place. It was a profoundly moving time and one I'll write about someday.

There's an article in this magazine that is so well written and so full of compassion that it further encouraged a particular risk taking activity in me. Ever since seeing "Saving Pvt. Ryan" and reading Tom Brokaws "The Greatest Generation" and even a little before either of these, I have felt moved to acknowledge any older vet I've been able to recognize. What moved me in this direction originally was the memory I had of a newsreel story I'd seen as a kid about a gathering of the last Civil War Veterans. It was grainy footage of a bunch of gray bearded ancient guys with canes and in rocking chairs at a reunion that must have taken place in the 40's.

And then they were gone, and the visible presence of a whole era of our Nations experience gone with their passing.

Fragments of the memory of that moment stayed with me for many years and then came back to full life spontaneously just this year and I began to think about the fact that we are losing the living presence of another era with the passing of the vets from WW ll. No doubt it also has something to do with my own thoughts of mortality and it was further underlined by the Ryan movie, Brokaws book and now this article.

The piece is titled; "The Big Parade" by Thomas Fleming and it is a description of a huge review that took place in Washington, DC in May of 1865. It was a parade of the Unions Eastern and Western Armies, which, because they were so big, took place over a two day period. This wasn't a parade like any we have seen in our lifetimes. No pressed uniforms and shiny boots. No glittering medals and polished steel. This was come-as-you-are and most of these men had come from local battlefields were the earth was still stained dark with spilled blood and the ragged brush and splintered trees still smelled of gun powder.

What the spectators saw was not a sanitized version of the experience of war. They saw the war strained faces and bodies of men wearing a variety of worn out, patched up, ragged uniforms. They saw shell torn and bullet riddled battle flags and ambulances with recently used stretchers roped to the sides. They saw barefoot troops marching behind road weary, dusty horses. What they witnessed was the last exhalation of a dying time. Fleming ends his article with; "For seven and a half hours the men of the West strode down Pennsylvania Avenue on those sinewy young legs that had carried them farther than most armies had marched in the history of warfare. In the end the cheering spectators realized the aura of invincibility came from something invisible, intangible, something profoundly connected to the idea of freedom. Lincoln had summoned these grandsons of the pioneers from the nations heartland to settle the ancient issue between the founding sections. More than one spectator sensed it was the martyred President himself in his Western prime they saw striding past them on May 24th, 1865.

"Within a month this exotic host, and its less glamorous brothers in the Army of the Potomac, had vanished like its creator, 'melted back', in the words of one newspaperman, 'into the heart of the people from whence it came.'"

"Melted back into the heart of the people" that image struck me and has further moved me to make sure that whenever I have the opportunity, whenever I spot one of those guys who are like ghostly reminders from of a part of our history that ended just 80 years almost to the day after the Civil War, I will thank him personally. That means that I have to pull myself out of my natural introversion and reach out my hand and speak the words; "Thanks for what you did. We haven't forgotten and we are grateful." In essence that's what I usually say. Brokaw says we're losing these guys at the rate of around 2000 a day. Soon there will be no physical presence of that time. I want to make sure that anyone of these guys, and women too, know that we still know and remember them. I spotted a WAC license plate the other day and spent a bit of time tracing the owner inside the store I had just left in order to do what I felt it was important to do. My effort lit up her eyes a little and that was nice to see. In a restaurant in Denver last week a vet responded to my handshake with; "Oh that was WAY back." As if the distance of it made it less important. I replied; "Well doesn't matter. We STILL remember you and what you did."

I could see it went in. Went in deep. If you saw "Pvt. Ryan" do you remember the last scene? I think it was really the seminal point of the movie though everyone focuses on the realism of the battle footage. It was when Ryan turned to his wife and fervently asked if she thought he was a good man. He was asking if his surviving had been worth all it took in the face of what it cost. And it was also a question that, in his heart of hearts, every man asks at some point no matter what his life experience.

I want to play a part in answering that question for any man. These days I want to do it by thanking any man I see who had a part helping us all have a better life by risking his own in that very dark time of world war. It's hard to do and risky somehow.

And worth it.

Coyote On Coyote - More about Coyote by Dick Prosapio

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