We must remember our heroes

Hugh Thompson, Lawrence Coburn, Glen Androtta

On March 16,1968 these three landed a helicopter between Vietnamese civilians and American troops led by Lt. Calley in a village called My Lai. They trained their weapons on the soldiers thus ending the massacre.

It was the ability to do the right thing, even at the risk of personal safety, that guided their actions. May they be remembered long after those who led this nation to evil are forgotten.

Memorial Day is thinly veiled promotion of and prologue to the next senseless
war.’ Charge, boys, in the name of your fallen fathers’.

I’ll drink to that.

Those who know me know that asking me to memorialize war and warriors, is an act most futile. I’ll leave the memorializing of war to the Wicked Witch of Wassila, and her gang of noisy reprobates.

There is a memorial to the warriors of Vietnam, who died for no good reason, but there is no memorial to the uncounted Indo-Chinese innocents that died as a result of that particular war. It took over thirty years to remember the valor of the few at My Lai who intervened against the massacre there.

“The My Lai Massacre was the mass murder of 347–504 unarmed citizens in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968, conducted by a unit of the United States Army. All of the victims were civilians and most were women, children (including babies), and elderly people. Many of the victims were raped, beaten, tortured, and some of the bodies were found mutilated.
The massacre took place in the hamlets of M? Lai and My Khe of S?n M? village during the Vietnam War. While 26 US soldiers were initially charged with criminal offenses for their actions at My Lai, only William Calley was convicted of killing 22 villagers. Originally given a life sentence, he served three and a half years under house arrest.
When the incident became public knowledge in 1969, it prompted widespread outrage around the world. The massacre also increased domestic opposition to the US involvement in the Vietnam War. Three US servicemen who made an effort to halt the massacre and protect the wounded were later denounced by US Congressmen. They received hate mail, death threats and found mutilated animals on their doorsteps. It would take 30 years before they were honored for their efforts.”

During the Second World War large cities with no military targets were razed and burned, the innocents were burned alive and vaporized. Perhaps the participants of war were hapless victims of circumstance, and not to be condemned, but those who glorify them, and war in general, should be condemned in the strongest terms possible.
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Row upon row of pretty white blood spattered crosses defiling a symbol that has come to represent peace and love.

a memorial for soldiers…

a memorial for soldiers stands on mental real estate…
it’s filled with fallen heroes hoping headway opens gates!...
as each gravesite laid to rest in peace shall have no peace until…
all cause of death from calls to war install life’s saving will!...

just as a message can’t be quelled by simply killing its deliverers…
their dying wish still lives alive in more troops’ final whispers!...
“mankind must come to realize deadly combat needs to end…
and see these vicious cycle ideas cease in the minds of living men!”...

Now there’s a concept way past it’s prime…