Ah, these Mondays.
These Memorial Day Mondays.
Honoring the sacrifice of so many and remembering what conflicts, large and small, have cost us in the nation’s blood and treasure.
There are so many beautiful places of honor where many of them now rest.
NAS Pensacola has a National Cemetery. When we first moved here, it was still confined to what is lovingly referred to as ‘The Old Section.’ The narrow lanes dotted with circles are enrobed with massive oaks, Spanish moss, and that deep, lovely green even on the hottest, most blistering of Pensacola summer days.
You can believe souls rest easy under these sprawling, towering guardians.
The site’s been used as a cemetery since the earliest days of the naval base itself, dating back to the Spanish who built the first Fort Barrancas, for which it’s named. Beginning in 1838, it was established as the U.S. Navy cemetery and has the remains of both Confederate and Union soldiers, as there had been fierce outbreaks of fighting in the area during the Civil War.
It became a National Cemetery in 1868.
…The first known burial is thought to be San Clarkson, buried May 15, 1829. As a result of its age, Barrancas National Cemetery served as the burial place of those who have served in the military dating back to the Civil War. This place is not only home to Veterans, but to their spouses and children.
In the mid 1800s this area experienced outbreaks of yellow fever and malaria causing death to soldiers, women, children and infants; some of which are buried in Barrancas National Cemetery. A monument was created in 1884 by the Marine Guard of the Pensacola Navy Yard to honor and remember those who died of yellow fever.
As of 2022, Barrancas Cemetery, is the resting place for over
40,000 individuals. It is the burial place for countless notable names to include the second wife of Apache Chief Geronimo, Ga-ah. It is the burial place for Medal of Honor recipients such as Army Staff Sgt. Clifford C. Sims, Marine Maj. Steven W. Pless and Navy Lt. Clyde E. Lassen. British aviators, 2nd Seminole War casualties, and aviators who died overseas are also buried here.
Wandering the aisles and lingering over the tombstones is an education in the life of a different time. With the details on gravestones of myriad everyday deadly hazards now inconceivable in the military profession, from the yellow fever to cannon mishaps or simple infections that claimed limbs and lives.
The newer section of Barrancas was carved out of the scrub oak and pine growing alongside Bayou Grande in the early 2000s.
One of the first heroes to lie in that hallowed ground was Pensacola’s first loss of the Iraq War, and it broke this town’s heart in 2005.
Lance Corporal Jonathan Spears, all of 21 years old.
Losing their boy crushed his parents.
Lance Cpl. Jonathan Spears, who shed some of the weight that made him a formidable football player before the Marines would let him enlist, is the first service member from the Pensacola area to die in Iraq.
The Pentagon confirmed Wednesday that Spears, 21, of Molino, a rural community north of Pensacola, was killed by small-arms fire Sunday in Ar Ramadi. He had been with the 3rd Battalion, 7th Regiment of the 1st Marine Division based at Twentynine Palms, Calif.
”He was one of the best sons a daddy could want,” his father, Timothy Spears, said Tuesday as tears rolled down his cheeks. ”He gave his life doing what he believed in, and he served his country proudly.”
He was such a good young man and the finest Marine.
…Spears told family members in an e-mail that his duty in Iraq fulfilled a search for purpose by helping ensure democracy for people who had never known it. He closed, as he always did, with a message for his mother: ”Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll be fine.”
We lined the streets for miles when they brought him home for the last time.
To Barrancas.
As I wrote that day, November 2, 2005:
We had to let him know. Had to make sure his family knew what his life and their God awful sacrifice meant. Little knots of us ~ five, ten, fifteen strong ~ lined the miles from the funeral home to the gates of NAS Pensacola. So many strangers, all with the same aching heart. The strangers with red eyed, tear streaked faces who nodded at us through car windows, tissues pressed to their mouths, as the miles long procession rolled quietly on by.
Strangers on street corners and sidewalks. I met Frances, who helped me hold my ratty flag. She was there on her birthday with her very gentlemanly husband. Their son Gary, a Vietnam Marine, rode the one motorcycle in the unending line of cars; the Marine Corps flag flying proudly from his handlebars. There was the dad who made sure his son was with him, complete with red, white and blue bandana flags. “It’s hard to find little flags this time of year”, he said. “We had these bandanas…” I thought they were perfect.
And then the escort appeared. Flags went up, backs stood tall and straight, hats came off and hands went on hearts. On all those aching hearts. By God, we’re proud of you, son. All of us just wanted you to know.
On eagle’s wings, sweet boy. Semper Fi, Marine.
Jonathan’s mother, Marie, passed away three years later. Oh, God bless her. I know she has that boy of hers tight in her arms now.
I believe his mother died of a broken heart, whatever the official diagnosis on paper said.
My dear friend Carl still remembers crying like a baby when his adored cousin Gary, nine years his senior, was shot down over Cambodia in 1971.
SP5 Gary C. David was one of the secret heroes of the war in Vietnam, as was his crewmate that day, SP5 Frank A. Sablan.
…The unit’s general mission at the time was to provide support to both US and South Vietnamese forces in the area of operation. Like similar ASA units, the 371st was dedicated to gathering the critical intelligence required to allow coalition forces to gain an advantage in the battle space, and ultimately to save lives. The missions conducted combined highly skilled electronic direction finding with the lethal firepower of mobile airborne warfare. Airborne radio direction finding had distinct advantages over ground-based collection operations due to its ability to cover larger areas. The ultimate goal of the missions was to locate enemy units so that firepower could be brought to bear. This often times required the teams to “get in close,” so close, in fact, that the unarmed aircraft were often subjected to enemy fire. On this day, the crew’s specific THEY SERVED IN SILENCE The Story of a Cryptologic Service and Sacrifice Yellow Bird Down MP 33610 objective was to collect intelligence related to the enemy activity near the portion of the Ho Chi Minh trail that ran through southeastern Cambodia.
Due to the success of these flights, in February of 1971 the North Vietnamese had moved anti-aircraft weapons into the area. Approximately nineteen miles past the South Vietnamese border, near Dambe, Cambodia, the helicopter took a direct hit from a 37mm anti-aircraft gun. The blast blew off the main rotors of aircraft, causing it to plummet to the ground and explode. All four soldiers were killed in the attack. The next day, a South Vietnamese unit was able to reach the crash site and recover the remains of Uhl, David, and Sablan. No remains of WO1 Black were ever found.
Both David and [SP5 Frank A.] Sablan were beloved by their friends and families and highly thought of and respected by their compatriots. Teena Ligman, the wife of a family friend and fellow soldier David Ligman, noted that “My husband served with Gary … the day he died, my husband had actually been slated to go up. Gary loved to fly and took his place … my heart hurts for the sacrifice of all those who loved, or would have loved Gary David.” Frank Sablan’s sister noted on a digital tribute site, “You are in my thoughts and heart… I am proud of you and all that you gave to your country and family.”
Gary had volunteered for that second tour.
He didn’t have to be there. But he had been.
Gary’s remains weren’t identified until 2003. All those years.
Lt Gen Jack Bergman, USMC(Ret) remembers, too. The friends of his childhood and adulthood who were lost to war.
Years later – it doesn’t matter how many – the tears still come. The memories flood back, the choking starts, and dear God, if only you could see them for one second more.
Deep breath. Carry on.
Our family, too, knows the sacrifice and the hurt that is always right there below the surface.
We lost a huge chunk of our family in Afghanistan one unspeakable morning when a Taliban suicide bomber took our nephew from us. A hole in our hearts that nothing can ever fill or heal.
Three years ago, our son was sitting alongside John’s grave at Arlington for the first time since the funeral. He hadn’t been back to the States thanks to overseas PCS moves, including doing his own tour at Bagram.
Just before he got to visit Arlington, the disastrous Biden administration pullout from Afghanistan had happened. A reporter for The Atlantic wandering Section 60 – the Afghanistan-era casualty section – saw him sitting distraught next to John’s headstone and went to speak to him. Unbeknownst to anyone, her assistant had also taken a photograph, which she sent along later.
The pain on my son’s face in that picture rips my heart out to this day.
Every day is another day to survive for the families who lost and loved these valiant warriors so deeply.
It doesn’t matter if it was yesterday or years.
The pain of the loss goes to your very marrow, and no amount of soothing talk can ever make it hurt less. Not to our John Perry’s mom, his dad, and his beautiful family. Not to Ebola, or major dad, and me. Not to Carl, who mourns his big cousin Gary, or Gen Bergman, who misses his dearest friends to this day.
Not to any of the families and friends who so loved those names now carved on headstones.
Our heroes. The nation’s honored dead.
We are so proud of who they were and what they were willing to do that others would not have to.
Spare a moment on this day of all days for thankful memories of our fallen. For our fellow Americans under oak trees in Pensacola, on the gentle slopes of Arlington, or laid to rest in their hometowns across this great country of ours.
This country, which these finest Americans loved so dearly, served so faithfully, and gave that last full measure for.
The only thing we would ever ask is that Americans have a grateful Memorial Day.
Semper Fi
