What Did You Say?

I am so very blessed in so many ways. I am truly a man without excuses because of the family that raised me. Yes, I said a family. A Great-Grandmother, two sets of Grand-Parents, my parents, and a gaggle of Aunts and Uncles. Not even a whiff of dysfunction anywhere. I was born into a Christian family, and not one religious christian could be found. Every one without exception whore their personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ on their sleeve. No matter when you saw any of them, they would be the same as you saw them on Sunday. I really do not have any excuses for messing up.

I learned at a young age that my dad’s brother was killed at the end of World War II. He was a navigator in the Army Air Corp. His flight crew was taking one of their normal runs in the Philippine Islands. As they were about to take off to return to their home base, they were warned of a storm in their flight path and recommended they stay where they were until the storm passed by. The Pilot thought they could make it, and they never heard from any of them ever again.

Dad served n the Army and later in the Merchant Marines. One of my aunts married a career Marine, who became one of my lifetime heroes. He served in Korea. During one his transport missions they were ambushed. He was injured and couldn’t get away, so he pretended to be dead. A North Korean drove his riffle butt into my uncles back, breaking it. After coming home and getting healed, he went back. He was the lead truck driver behind General Puller’s jeep leading the 1st Marines out of the infamous Frozen Chosin Reservoir. His life of dedication, commitment and service added to the lessons learned from my dad and grand fathers.

When it came time for me to serve, and I thought I might be drafted into the Army, I took advantage of a special offer to join the Marin Corps. I served in Vietnam, earned a Purple Heart, and came real close to making the Marine Corp a career. Jill, my wife to be (and has been for over 40 years) had another idea.

A couple of years ago my dad asked me to accompany him to Texas over Memorial Day Weekend. The idea was for just the two of us to get away, see where he was born and raised, and on that Sunday, his brother, Ovie Junior Broussard, was being recognized. The church my dad and his family were raised in had a memorial outside the church honoring the members of their church that had died in service to their country. The church had moved to a larger property, and had built a massive memorial with a bronze statue of a soldier bowing before this memorial praying for a lost comrade. My dad was to get a smaller version of the statue during the ceremony.

We left here on Wednesday and came home the next Monday. To this day, dad and I often refer to that weekend and how much it meant to both of us. But that’s not the only reason I remember the reason for celebrating Memorial Day.

Like many others, I lost many great friends while in Vietnam. One in particular came home with me on weekend leave almost every weekend. It was four of us, Don Grubb, Don Cunningham, Jim Burnett and myself. Cunningham and I were placed on squads within the same Regiment, several miles apart. The third day in country, Don was setting out a Claymore Mine and a sniper killed him. That was the toughest of all the losses. Because our Daughter Amanda and her husband Scott invited us out to dinner and then to see the Copy of the Vietnam Memorial that was displayed at Rose Hills (never able to make my self see it before), I made it a priority to find his name. I did.

All the talk in the world about war is utterly worthless. No one actually loves war except for those that want to lord control and power over others. To those of us who willingly went to war for our country, war was a necessity to defeat those that want to lord control and power over others. It’s that simple. I’m not asking people to love war, but to accept that sometimes we are called upon to fight for freedom. The Bible is full of war references, and God used verbiage of war when writing through men like the Apostle Paul. We all are in an ongoing Spiritual War. The advantage we have is we know the Victor and that we win because we belong to Him.

In closing, keep up the good fight a faith.