By Guthrie Worth ?letters to the editor
Another Memorial Day has come and gone. One of the “days” that, to me, has real caring and has a noble purpose. But it leaves me with a couple of thoughts.
I feel badly that so much is dedicated to those who died, but that so little “memorial” is dedicated to those who were (simply) wounded ? and still lived a life as best they could after being disfigured, maimed, and otherwise traumatized. To me these survivors deserve much more attention than those who died. Dead is dead; to live with war-caused handicaps is to be admired more than most of us do.
My other thought is a personal one. I was six months too young to be processed in time to be shot at, yet I was fortunate to have the maturing experience that the draft forced on us. Looking back, a truly positive experience. But I never got the chance to participate in the combat activities that have provided the “material” for Memorial Day. Every time a Memorial Day passes, every time I see pictures of members of the armed forces in combat, I look in the mirror and wonder if I would have had the guts and courage to do the same if called on. I would hope I would have performed satisfactorily. But each Memorial Day I wonder, and I”ll never know!
I am legally a veteran, got all the WWII benefits, but on Memorial Day I wonder if I could have made it as a corpsman with a marine company on the beaches of Japan. In my case, thank God for the atom bomb!
Guthrie Worth
Lakeport
