Memorial Day

Memorial Day has become, like all of our national holidays, another three-day weekend for most Americans to shop, camp, picnic, grill, or just laz around. Pools open. Ballgames play. Cars race. Everything’s on sale at Macy’s. Yes, there are still some parades and ceremonies in decorated cemeteries to acknowledge the original purpose of the holiday – honoring those who have given their lives in military service for our country. But over the past few decades, and particularly over the past decade, since 9/11 and our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the thrust of the holiday is like so many others (July 4^th, Veterans Day, Flag Day, even Thanksgiving and Labor Day) a jingoistic and politically opportunistic mandate to “support our troops.” I’m all for supporting our troops, though I personally believe the best way of supporting our troops in most wars, including Afghanistan and Iraq, is not to send them there to die in the first place or to bring them home as soon as the cause is won or shown to be unwinnable.

Every Memorial Day for the past 42 years, I think of Ralph Bickford. He’s the only person I’ve known who has died in combat. (That in itself says much about the disconnect between our military campaigns of the past half century and the vast majority of the population.) Ralph was one of my best friends in fifth and sixth grades at Adams Elementary in Wichita, Kansas. We tumbled together in gym class, played bongos and limbo. One of our family’s best (and neighborhood’s most prolific) cats, Boliver, was given to us by Ralph. We migrated to other friends in junior high and grew apart, though still had occasional contact. In high school we saw each other seldom, running in different groups, pursuing different interests. After high school, I went off in fits and starts to college, while Ralph apparently joined the military, though I don’t recall being aware of it at the time. Not having been close to Ralph for several years, I have no idea if he enlisted out of patriotic duty or fear of the draft or just nothing else to do with his life.

I don’t know how I heard about Ralph’s death in Vietnam, probably from my mother who had occasional contact with his mother. I also heard from someone (probably not my mother) that Ralph had enlisted at the same time as his best friend in high school, David Lind (they had been on the gymnastic team together), though Ralph went into the army, while David went into the Navy. And I have no idea whether or not this is true or who could have told me or if it is something whole cloth from my imagination, but in my memory is the story of Ralph’s death: David was killed in action on January 14, 1969. The protocol at the time was for another service member to accompany the dead back to the U.S. for burial, and Ralph was the person who accompanied David back. After a short R&R stateside, Ralph returned to Vietnam in March, and his unit engaged in combat on March 22. According to the casualty data, Ralph “died outright” by “multiple fragmentation wounds.” What I was told (or remember being told) is that in that first enemy engagement after his return from David’s funeral, Ralph had stood up in the midst of a firefight and, in effect, committed suicide by combat.

Again, I don’t know how much, if any, of that is true. But it’s all that I have as truth in the death of the only person I’ve known, if only as a good friend for two years in elementary school, killed in combat. It’s also the only memory I carry with me each Memorial Day.