Sacrifices of War

[thedrifter]

Issue Date: April 1st, 2002

BACK TALK: Cousin?s death instructs on sacrifices of war


By Bryant Jordan
Times staff writer

I learned about death in the tears and screams of two women for a young Marine.
It was 1957. The hot war in Korea had cooled and Vietnam was still something for the French to worry about. We were at peace, but Americans still donned military uniforms and went off to serve. And sometimes they died. That was the case with my cousin, Bobby Byrne.

I was 5 years old, and my family lived on Monument Street in Charlestown, a Boston neighborhood where people took military service seriously. It was part of the environment.

Outside my front door, the hill swept left up to Monument Avenue and the square that was home to the Bunker Hill Monument, a granite obelisk memorializing those who stood their ground against overwhelming odds in 1775.

To the right, the hill descended to Bunker Hill Street, one of the two main avenues whose sidewalks lined with crowds every June 17 to mark the battle and bestow grateful cheers on subsequent generations of town veterans as they marched past.

Bobby, like many a ?Townie? before him and since, stepped from the sidewalk and into the ranks when he turned 18. He went to Parris Island, S.C., for boot camp and eventually to Red Bank, N.J. He left behind my Aunt Dolly, a younger and idolizing brother, Tommy, and a beautiful girlfriend, Peg. Everyone knew that Bobby and Peg were going to get married someday.

That was the plan.

It was morning. I don?t remember the time, but my father already had left for work and we kids were up and playing in the parlor. My mother was busy picking up around the house when Peg was suddenly there in the parlor her pretty face red and tear-streaked as she sobbed words that made little sense to me but made my mother scream and bury her face in her hands.

Bobby was dead.

His jeep had gone off the road and into the water, and he drowned. For a moment my world was only chaos and fear and screams. Years later, first-hand recollections of Bobby had faded, replaced solely by fleeting, silent pre-Marine Corps images caught on a movie camera and my own mind?s image of his jeep going into the water. I would see Peg working at the Union Market at Monument and Bunker Hill streets. She was nearing middle age, married and a mother. Tommy, Bobby?s brother, grew up, married and had his own children; he named his only son after his Marine brother.

Many others also would go off to the service. Most of us would come home, but a few would not.

Today, more than I have for years, I think of Bobby Byrne and the morning I learned about death. And for all the time that has gone by, there are moments when the image of my mother and Peg on that terrible morning is clear, the horror is fresh, and I can still hear the screams.

As long as there are soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen, it will always be like this, whether the country is at peace or war.

These are hard days for many families across the country. Six months after Sept. 11 and the start of the war on terrorism, we are seeing our battlefield casualties. And in the quickening pace of operations we also appear to be seeing more deaths from accidents.

But whether death comes on the battlefield or the training field, on the front lines or in the rear staging areas, the loss will sear and change forever those left behind.

?The pain is the same,? Tommy Byrne told me recently.

You can remember only why they put on the uniform in the first place and hope that your own children never learn about death this way.

The writer, an Army veteran, is deputy news editor for Marine Corps Times.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/arc...APER-827169.php


Sempers,

Roger