***Reflection On A Veterans For Peace Memorial Day 2013 - A Remembrance Worthy Of The Day

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

To The Fallen-In Lieu Of A Letter

The mere mention of the name Veterans For Peace evokes images of hard-bitten ex-servicemen and women, many old, ramrod straight holding their beloved black and white peace dove-emblazoned banners flying proudly in all weathers. Of images of quickly written urgent and militant calls for withdrawal of American military personnel from conflicts somewhere in the bewildering number of places that this American government has planted its forces. And too images of relentless exposure of the thousand and one ways that this American government (and not just this government) tries to hide its atrocities against overwhelmed opponents and the innocent civilians who get caught up in the juggernaut. Those exercises of our democratic and moral obligations are what drives VFP most days but I want to put politics aside this day, or put them aside at least long enough to speak of another role that we have taken on over the past several years here in Boston on Memorial Day, a day of remembrance for our fallen.

Others can address, and eloquently, the origins and purposes of the day, a task that usually would come easily to this writer. Others will throw symbolic flowers into our beloved homeland the sea, into Boston Harbor, to give somber recognition to the fallen of current conflicts. Still others in other commemorations can, and will, speak of valor, honor, duty and unquestioned obedience to orders accompanied by the far-away tattoo of drums, the echo of the distant roar of cannon, cannon headed to some unmarked destination, and the whish and whirl as an unseen overhead airplane unloads it sacrilegious payload.

Today I choose though to speak of long ago but not forgotten personal remembrance, and to give name to that remembrance. To give name, James Earl Jenkins, old North Adamsville rough-house Irish neighborhoods friend and fellow of many boyhood adventures not all fit for public mention, a name now blood-stone etched in Vietnam War memorial black marble down in Washington, D.C. To give name, Kenneth Edward Jackman, my brother and James’ friend also, a name not etched in black stone but a causality of war nevertheless who, despite his fervent desire, “never made it back to the real world” from his tour in “Nam and spent his shortened lonely life reliving the past.

James and Kenneth, what happened to each of them and why, take on special meaning today as I utter their names publicly from the misty past for the first time in a long time because those names link to those we remember today. Not just those, like James, who served under whatever conditions and for whatever personal reasons, those seem beside the point just now served died, but those  like my brother, those who do not show up in any official casualty report but all those nevertheless damaged by the close-hand experience of war.

But enough of this, as it only brings another saddened tear. But, as well, enough of war.