Memorial Day: My family, like many, has bled for ideals that both withstood history's judgment, and not

Third-class Petty Officer Felton Mims in Vietnam

Memorial Day.

Today, we honor those who have died in battle, and those who carry their wounds, physical, mental and spiritual, among us today.

Always, it seems, when we send our young to war, it's it for the best of reasons -- at least, they seem so, at the time the bullets fly and bombs are dropped.

But history judges our wars, unearths their motivations, and renders its verdicts.

On this Memorial Day, I am sharing parts of a blog I wrote several years ago about generations of my own family's wartime sacrifices:
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From the American Revolution through the Civil War, World Wars I and II, to Vietnam and, I presume, even today, Mimses have served in uniform. 

Three Mimses are on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., cousins, black and white, who died in combat on the ground and in the air.

Air Force Capt. George Mims, of Manning, S.C., was shot down over North Vietnam in December 1965, never to be heard from again, an MIA eventually declared dead in 1973. His body was never recovered.

Third-class Petty Officer Felton Mims, a Texan, drowned in Go Cong Province, while serving on a Navy river patrol boat in March 1969. (That's him in the photo above, getting a haircut from a crewmate).

Army PFC Kenneth Mims, from Alabama, died when stepped on a land mine as he and other members of the B Company, 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry, 101^st Airborne Division patrolled near Thua Thien in April 1971.

Four of my uncles served and survived, albeit with nightmares, the crucible that was World War II in the Pacific.

Two Mimses fought the British, another fought for them, in the American Revolution.

The Civil War killed relatives by the dozens, North and South, white and black. It directly affected my line of the family, with my great-grandfather, wounded as a Confederate private, was left crippled and dependent on morphine before he died, leaving my 7-year-old grandfather and his mother destitute.

His poverty and an austere upbringing by an older brother haunted him, and by extension my own father, who struggled with a distant, demanding relationship with his Dad.

To a far lesser extent, I experienced some of the same in my early years, before a mild heart attack left my dad more engaged -- just in time for my critical teen years. (note: My Dad died on Jan. 17,2019, at age 96).

The victims of war enrich the soil of American cemeteries, where the young dead gradually rejoin the earth from which the first humans sprang, appearing from the primordial mists of creation. The victims of war who live on color the lives of their ancestors -- for good, and for ill.

Still, on this day I am quietly, thoughtfully grateful to those who fought, and sometimes died for their principles and country. . . and those who survived the crucible to continue my family's journey through the life of the worlds to come.

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P.S. (Thanks to my cousin, Marilyn -- comment below -- also learned of Seaman Robert Lang Mims, who died in the Pearl Harbor attack on the U.S.S. Arizona. Sobering to think his remains are entombed still below the Pacific's waves).

Memorial Day: Only the names of our wars and the victims' faces have changed

Memorial Day.

 This time, every year, I am once more 17, a pallbearer at the military funeral of my childhood friend, Lee Olemacher.

 Lee, a year ahead of me at Cheney High School, was drafted. The Vietnam War was supposed to be "winding down." The "Vietnamization" of the war, the White House called it. Our boys soon to come home while their boys shouldered the responsibility of defense.

 Sound familiar? Maybe we should call it "Afghanistanization," which may work better than the "Iraqization" of our wars, which has left a violent, sectarian, divided mess.

 But nonetheless, that autumn day in 1972 we laid Lee to rest in a flag-draped coffin, Taps were played, the honor guard fired the empty, somber salute. A folded flag was given to a mother grieving for her only child.

 Lee was a rare innocent, who took simple pleasure in a smile, a rough pat on the back, teaching kids to play baseball as a Little League coach. 

 Forty year ago, now. Had he lived what could he have accomplished? How many lives touched, enriched? I am almost 60, a graying, aging man with memories, good and bad, sweet and bitter. Lee is forever young, we'll never know what he may have become.

 Since Lee, tens of thousands more American men and women have died in service to their country. A new generation of maimed and wounded -- physically, mentally, spiritually -- come back to our shores.
Forty years, and still we war, still we hate, still we thing violence would serve the good, or we are forced into violence to meet violence . . . and the cycle goes on. 

What version of God or gods, ideology, political system or economic advantage is worth the blood we have shed, or been forced to exact in return from those who shed blood?

When will be beat our swords into plowshares and learn war no more?

Happy Memorial Day? Rather, I wish for us a Contemplative Memorial Day, and the commitment to work for peace, love and the dignity of our brothers and sisters one life, one family, one community, one city, one state, one nation, one planet at a time.

God bless, and empower us all to dream of, and help make better times.