Over the weekend, we attended the 11th annual Iwo Jima reunion held each year in Sterling, Kansas. We have a relative who is a wounded veteran of the Iwo campaign, and we have attended regularly these reunions.
Each year the host passes the microphone and asks anyone in the audience for comments. When it comes my turn I have no clue what to say that will have anything to do with what these men (and women) went through in a period of their lives that many would probably rather forget.
This year, in my little speech, I paid respect to the wives of the men who served there. These women have been married to their husbands for 60 years or more and have endured nightmares, emotional outbursts, chronic wounds and their after-effects, alcoholism, and other indignities. Through it all they (as the song says) stood by their men with class and grace.
“Thank you” isn’t enough, it seems, for either the men or the women. Yet each will tell you to a man that the heroes are six feet under. They say that they, the living, are merely survivors.
By the way, one other thing they will tell you, to a man, is that they wouldn’t be here today were it not for the dropping of the bomb. There is no vacillation, no hesitation. They knew where they were headed after Iwo Jima. And it wasn’t stateside.
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