FILE - The sun shines through the flags in the Memorial Day Flag Garden on Boston Common, May 27, 2023, in Boston. Memorial Day is supposed to be about mourning the nation’s fallen service members. But it’s come to anchor the unofficial start of summer and retail discounts. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, file)

Two boys sit rocking back and forth,

As bands play marching tunes.

They laugh.

“That man don’t have no legs,” they say.

And creamy pink buds of dogwood trees

Are swept away by the breeze.

The boys get up and race through grassy fields

To where their mother sits and weeps and holds a tiny hand-made flag. They shrug.

“She does this every year,” they say.

And the balmy air smells of lilac perfume.

They weave like fighter planes

Among the neatly centered slabs of stone

And see the people strolling slowly waving paper fans.

They rest.

“Our daddy’s under there,” they say.

And daffodils sway gently under pale blue skies.

Then the boys recall the day when someone took their dad away.

“He’d taken too much medicine,”

Was all that they would say.

(But all they knew was that the

Scary night-time screams during daddy’s bad, bad dreams were gone.)

The boys walk swiftly through the silent streets.

Another setting sun lingers briefly over the horizon.

Tomorrow, they’ll have forgotten this pleasant celebration.

They smile.

“That was fun,” they say and head for home…

My daughter Carrie was 17 when she wrote this poem 38 years ago. She had met many of my veteran friends and learned firsthand about Agent Orange and PTSD, the signature wounds of the Vietnam War. She was especially bothered by the fact that very little was being done at the time by the government to provide treatment for these wounds and compensation (disability claims) for the wounded. She was all too familiar with the aftereffects of the government’s negligence: suicides, alcohol and drug addiction (self-medication), divorces, unemployability, incarceration, homelessness, antisocial behavior, etc. I vividly recall at our national Agent Orange Symposium at HCCC her eloquent address on behalf of the “youngest victims of the war,” the ones with visible scars (chloracne and birth defects) and the invisible ones (PTSD related) caused by daddy’s rage induced verbal assaults.

Sad to say, the problems addressed that day continued unattended for decades. During one of those years a vet who I played softball with killed himself. I can still see him, after a practice, riding off into the sunset with his young namesake by his side. A former combat medic and good friend who was fortunate enough to win his disability claim has a son who still suffers from a malady caused by his dad’s exposure to the dioxin laced herbicide. That same exposure continues to debilitate him physically, as it does another combat medic friend who’s a Director of our Herkimer County Hunger Coalition. And it plagues thousands of others across the length and breadth of this country. Tragically, the suicides haven’t gone away.

It was bad enough that ‘Nam vets had to return home branded as baby killers and losers for courageously fighting a war caused by misguided politicos, but to be treated as an enemy by the same government for demanding treatment and compensation for wounds suffered was and is reprehensible.

As bad as all this was for the veterans, it was and continues to be as bad, if not worse, for the silent victims-the mothers, wives and children; especially those whose loved ones paid the ultimate price. Take the little boys in Carrie’s poem. They’re too young to really understand it all. Thankfully. For them, daddy’s in a better place. Their childhood innocence ends when, down the road, they learn the circumstances, whole truth, surrounding his death.

And speaking of children, with the 249th anniversary of the Battle of Oriskany approaching, I can’t help but feel a deep sense of remorse for the progeny of my relatives, the 9 Snells, who died that day. Literally here today, gone tomorrow. No child should be deprived, suddenly, of the love, care, and protectiveness of one of the two most important people in his or her life. Like Carrie’s boys, my long-ago cousins’ fathers died for their country. But at the time, that thought brought little solace. (note: among the Snell victims were my 6th great-grandfather Jacob and 14-year-old cousin John, a fifer).

“Their mother sits and weeps.” Over the years, I’ve seen many a widow quietly grieving in her own distinct way in cemeteries dotting the countryside throughout upstate New York. Memorial Day isn’t the only time that they make the visit. I knew some of the mothers and widows and the heartache never ends, their pain somewhat tempered by those visits. I also knew wives of the living but “walking dead” who were killed in Vietnam; it just took them longer to die. Some are still walking.

On the 25th, I hope readers take the time to attend a Memorial Day program in their area. It’s the least that we can do given their sacrifices. We must remember never to forget.

As for Kay and me, we’ll journey over to the sacred ground at the Oriskany battlefield and say a prayer of thanks in the memories of the Snell men and teenager. Then we’ll make a run over country roads to little Burlington Flats and pay homage to Eagle Scout and Army Cpl. Michael Mayne who was killed in Iraq on February 23, 2009. The folks over there really know how to put together a parade. We’ll head home at dusk in appreciation of the fact that the sacrifices of the Snells and Cpl. Mayne and all the others over the past 250 years made this country what it is and who we are.

Ray Lenarcic is a 1965 State University of New York at Fredonia graduate and is a resident of Herkimer.