A Memorial Day Yizkor

This year, Memorial Day falls during the Festival of Shavuot. On Monday, many synagogues will be reciting the traditional Yizkor prayers, remembering their loved ones called from this world to the next.  America is called similarly to remember those who fell in service of our country.  It is a rare juxtaposition of calendars, and prompts me to offer these thoughts from Views from Outside the Box.

Uniform service is a bit of a family tradition for me; my father and aunt went Navy, a cousin and my father-in-law were Marines.  Frankly, if I am the last of my line to volunteer to wear a military uniform it would be fine with me. Don’t get me wrong:  I’m deeply patriotic and love my country, and I am proud of my service to it during both my enlistment and officer tours. If either of my sons chose to serve I would be proud for their decision that will come on their own terms. I simply refuse to glamorize the experience of military life, if only because death hovers close to it at all times. 

Jewish grave marker at St. Mihiel Military Cemetery and Memorial, Thiaucourt, France

This presence of death is palpable even in peace time.  Sometimes it seems prosaic, like it could happen anywhere.  I remember a shipmate on my first ship, Teddy.  Teddy was a fellow electrician’s mate, and all around good guy. He was returning to the ship, having enjoyed his first weekend off after an intense at sea period and fell asleep at the wheel in the Hampton Tunnel.  During the next deployment, another guy on the ship got a “Dear John” letter, along with her photos of her with other men to underscore the finality of the split.  He committed suicide at the next port of call.  (By the way, historically suicide is generally understood to be underreported in the military.  It is amazing, however, the amount of “motorcycle accidents” especially by junior officers who don’t own or ride motorcycles.) Then there are deaths that are clearly mission-oriented.  I remember right before Christmas one year when a newly re-married pilot reported to his squadron and was going through his carrier quals.  The December weather off the North Florida coast wasn’t the best, but it certainly wasn’t the worst.  His attack plane cleared the flight deck, but then struggled to gain altitude. The crew watched from the deck and from CCTV as the plane descended, and then pancaked over the ocean surface.  It was over in less than a minute. The pilot never even had a chance to eject. I’ll spare you the litany of all the ways a person can die while assigned to a warship.  I will simply state that I cannot remember a major deployment on either ship from which we did not return with a shipmate’s body in a meat storage locker.

Yet it is not just the military member who sacrifices when answering the call to duty.  Oftentimes, there is a collateral cost paid by their immediate family.  A few years ago I was visiting a museum in Washington, DC.  There was an exhibit of the US Navy submarine corps, with a focus on their Cold War duties and missions.  One part of the exhibit featured the home front.  Picture after picture chronicled the absence of the submariners from their families.  It was heartbreaking to see the birthday parties, graduations, Scout meetings, christenings and baby-namings, and other family gatherings that revealed young moms, oftentimes with three or more kids, trying to keep it together while their husbands were away someplace known only to God and the boat’s navigator.  The abundant smiles on their faces in the photos were often  too strained, too forced, to be reassuring. The young children seemed a little lost, usually hovering around Mom. The teenage boys often appeared to be borderline hostile, perhaps angry that once again Dad couldn’t be at an important occasion.  The teenage girls often seemed uncertain, on the verge of adulthood, yet clearly still not there.  The rate of divorce in this special community of undersea warriors was already at nearly 50% in the early 1960’s. God alone knows the psychological damage caused to family members by the rupture of normal relationships with their husbands and fathers; from suicide to the inability to foster meaningful committed relationships as adults. I cannot begin to imagine the human cost that their families paid in terms of depression and mental illness, alcoholism and chemical dependencies, jailbreak marriages and teen pregnancies.

While this particular exhibit focused on the Submarine Community in the Cold War, the fact is that it could be just about any front-line unit that has served in peacetime or in war. Our last decade of war has cost trillions of dollars, and that was just for the war-fighting.  It doesn’t take into consideration the “collateral costs” of the war:

          
           Wounded warriors still in their teens who will need VA care for the rest of their lives

Servicewomen who have been sexually assaulted by their own seniors, who then lose their children to foster care when they return home, unable to parent because of their PTSD

Families who have lost housing, income, or employment when a reservist answers the call for deployment

Children who will never see their mother or father again along with parents who will never see their children again

Veterans who will suffer long term unemployment at a rate higher than their non-military peers

One of my personal practices as a rabbi is to recite a special El Maleh Rahamim Memorial Prayer for those who offered the ultimate sacrifice for our country.  I use the pulpit edition of the Prayer Book for Jewish Personnel of the Armed Forces that I used a lay reader on board both my ships, and as a reservist chaplain. This year, my kavvanah (spiritual intentionality) will also include those who were collateral damage to the call answered by others. 

Let me urge that you can do something special for Memorial Day as well, even if you are not in services for Shavuot.  First, consider making a contribution to the Wounded Warrior Project, the Service Women’s Action Network, or the American Red Cross (earmarked for military family needs).  Finally, buy and display an American flag to show that you too remember the sacrifices made by military members and their families.

I wish you a Shavuot and Memorial Day filled with meaning.