Honor and gratitude

Today I logged onto Facebook as usual, and found out about an application that would allow me to "donate" my status in memory of a fallen serviceperson. Well, heck yeah, I am all for that!

There has been some military service in my family, and one death -- my great-uncle James, who died in 1942 in the Pacific. Whether it was in action or not, I do not know. He died before my father was born, and so he never knew him. The one story I had heard or read somewhere was that my great-grandmother was inconsolable. She bought a huge cemetery plot -- enough for 10 people -- but as far as I know, only she and my great-uncle are buried there. My grandfather is buried with my grandmother, at a perpetual care facility on the other side of that town, even though they definitely both could have been buried there.

Anyway, since I didn't know if he was actually killed in action, I didn't put his information into the application. Instead I allowed it to randomly find someone....... and it was just as poignant to me: SP4 Wilbert Eugene Jones, killed in the Vietnam War. When I saw that, I knew I had to find out more about him.

I Googled him and found a SP4 Wilbert E. Jones, and information about him at VirtualWall.org (PS: that's another thing on my bucket list: visiting the Wall; Jamie O'Hara's song "50,000 Names" still brings me to tears). He was from Eden, North Carolina, only about 4-5 hours from here. He was an infantryman, died at age 21, in Quang Tri province on 30 July 1969.

Why did Spec-4 Jones and his story affect me? My Daddy was an SP4, in Europe, during the Vietnam War era. It was only because of my grandfather's stroke and Dad being the last unmarried child that he was able to come home safe and sound before he saw combat. Daddy worked with rockets & missiles, so I have always believed that he would have been sent to 'Nam at some point. I am here today because of that odd stroke of fate (no pun intended).

This made me wonder if perhaps Daddy served with this guy at some point or knew him from boot camp or any of the other places he went. It just made me really stop and think about this fella -- who he might have been, where he was from........ So I printed the information for my daddy, telling him what I'd done and what I'd found. Daddy deciphered all the arcane Army jargon and acronyms. He didn't serve with him, but there was an immediate level of kinship, brothers in arms quite literally. Specialist Jones' tour began in December 1968, the same time my parents were celebrating their first Christmas together. He died 3 months before my own birth. His birthday? March 26..... my daddy's is March 6 (although 4 years earlier).

I wondered about the friends and family that Specialist Jones left behind there in Eden and at the various bases where he was stationed. I wonder how many of them are still here today to think of him, to be grateful for his ultimate sacrifice, to celebrate the person he was and to mourn what might have been. I wish I knew more of his story but I hope that he is never forgotten.