Flower Living in the Memory of a Tired, Wet, Marine

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show...(the opening lines of David Copperfield as written by Charles Dickens;inspired by MTM). Or at least this ACCOUNT will, perhaps, have a reflection on whether I'm going to be the hero in my own life.

...have you ever looked fear in the face And said I just don't care?
Glitter in the Air~~~Pink Paulo Antunes

Historical footnotes for this week:

June 25, 1950~~~is the historical start of the Korean War.
On 25 June 1950, the young Cold War suddenly turned hot, bloody and expensive. Within a few days, North Korea's invasion of South Korea brought about a United Nations' "police action" against the aggressors. That immediately produced heavy military and naval involvement by the United States. While there were no illusions that the task would be easy, nobody expected that this violent conflict would continue for more than three years.

Throughout the summer of 1950, the U.S. and the other involved United Nations' states scrambled to contain North Korea's fast-moving army, assemble the forces necessary to defeat it and simultaneously begin to respond to what was seen as a global military challenge from the Communist world.(Naval History & Heritage Command)

On June 24, 1995, the underdog Springboks South African Rugby team beat Powerhouse
New Zealand to win the Rugby World Cup.

Saturday 24th June 1995 will always be a stake in South African history that points to a direct time of unification in a vastly divided nation, a nation that had been filled and fueled by hatred because of a man's skin colour or language preference and what that represented below the surface. (Shelley du Plessis)
Nelson Mandela is a brilliant politician with a genius for disarming his enemies. To Mandela, everyone is human, everyone can be reached. The only question is how. In prison, he would introduce his lawyer to his "guard of honor" --- and his jailers would find themselves shaking hands with an attorney they loathed. And he used his dead time in prison to teach himself Afrikaans, read the Afrikaans newspapers and familiarize himself with Afrikaner history.
Rugby is the favorite sport of Afrikaners, the dominant white tribe in South Africa
--- "apartheid's master race." All but one of the 15 players on the Springbok team were white. In a stadium that held 62,000, 95% of the crowd would be white. No wonder that blacks saw the Boks as a symbol of oppression.
"Don't address their brains," Mandela believed. "Address their hearts." One direct way to do that was through sports. People love their teams; the connection is purely emotional. If the Springboks could come to engage both blacks and whites, that might end the sense among blacks that sports in South Africa was "apartheid in tracksuits" --- and might make whites more accepting of blacks as equals.
Mandela did not just lay out a goal. He met and charmed the white lords of rugby, then lobbied for the Rugby World Cup to be played in South Africa. He invited François Pienaar, the Springboks captain, to visit him and encouraged him to see his sport as "nation building". Soon the team was learning how to sing "Nkosi Sikele", the black national anthem. And, because a storybook fantasy was becoming reality, the Springboks advanced steadily to the World Cup finals. (Jesse Kornbluth)


This Week's Essay:


Is there redemption? Is there a sense of salvation? For all the innocence, the blood; theirs and ours, have they died in vain. Can there be a morsel of recompense that might be realized by the sheer irony of Fate? There are so many pieces of this puzzle, that after all these years, are still attempted to be placed.

Six Buffalo area Doctors, financed by a private Meilman Foundation, recently went to Ho Chi Minh City(Saigon), VietNam on a ten-day tour-of-duty. These six doctors did surgery on 100 children. During their stay, they treated the ones they could and had the sensitivity to bring one back here to the States for treatment. The doctors, plastic surgeons and orthopedic surgeons, were concentrating on the cases that had fallen through the cracks. These were children with cleft palates, fingers fused together, and there was a girl who wore her sandal backwards because her foot was turned the wrong way.

Here we are, in a country, operating as a communist regime; a country where our young men and women fought, bled, and died for, is now a country having some of their young, being helped to know a better life. Disfigured by the imperfect blueprint of humanity, our ‘intentions’ came to this storied soil again. Our medical expertise had gone to this backwoods, rice-paddy, rural, agricultural corner of SouthEast Asia to try to make some wrongs, right.

De ja vu, all over again.

Maybe this, in a small way, could help put a smile…on That Tired, Wet, MARINE.

Some of the doctors used the old Veterans Hospital built by the US Army before the Viet-Nam War. The surgeries were taking place in upper 90 degree heat.
Flashback to those awful days when the heat was taking its toll on the medical teams, and our wounded, and our dying.

In the other hospital, a three-story building with a broken elevator, the other surgeries were taking place. The doctors handled what they could but had to turn so many away. The locals having already been made aware of the presence of these gypsy Messiahs, the word had gotten out so that the rural inhabitants were also flocking in from the backwater areas.

Flashback to 30 April, 1975, and the warehouse roof across the street from the US Embassy. Two US helicopters came, took the select few that they could from those whom had gathered, and lifted away. In the wake of the departure of these helicopters, many distressed souls were left behind. And being left behind, these forsaken now had to contend with the wrath of the newly installed regime. Therein lays the limitations; the frailty of humanity. Even in its benevolent best, its ability to be righteous is so finite.

Flash forward; as the one doctor put it…’you should see the terribly disappointed faces of the Mothers.

On the Faces of Mothers are revealed the fates of Humanity. Included are its triumphs, weaknesses, and its malevolence. These encounters become the evidence that is brush-stroked on their faces. One can always know a good-day for humanity, or a bad-day, by looking at the face of a Mother. Blessed Mother's face must have defied description.

And then, what came in from the countryside, was this 4-year-old girl with a mole on her face the size of a palm. The mother was initially distraught because the girl’s condition was such that the hospital did not have the capacity to effect such a surgery. So the doctors asked”...would you like to come to America?”

On September 27, Doctor Meilman , will operate on this little girl. The good doctor can still remember the look on the Mother’s face. “You couldn’t see a happier lady in all of Viet Nam."

There is a Red Flower, with thorns, that grows wild in Viet Nam. This is the imagery that Tim Buckley uses in his 1968 ballad 'Once I Was A Soldier', in trying bring out some kind of a redemptive quality that just might provide a sense of salvation for those immersed in this hell. With the corrective surgery and the possibility of a better life, it is hoped that a redressing like the one the doctor made, holds out a redemptive quality to the nightmare that continues to come to mind, when VietNam is mentioned. And maybe this doctor's intention will provide the renewal that the theme to the lyrics of this Tim Buckley ballad promises: "...that Flower will LIVE…in the Memory of a Tired, Wet, MARINE."
--{-=@
Hickok
The Promise