It is The Veteran

I was trying to find something useful to do when somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I turned and saw Rick standing there in his Army dress uniform.

"Is a wake always like this? I don't have a clue about what I should be doing."

"Yeah, the ones I've been to have been. I never know what to do either. Wanna go out on the porch like we used to when your mom and sisters got too bitchy?"

Alice and I got married about the time Little Ricky started crawling. I adopted him a month after that. I didn't realize how much a little boy can change a man. Ricky wasn't really my son, but I'd been around him since he was born, so it felt like he was. I watched him crawl, then stand up only to fall back down on his butt, and finally walk the three steps between Alice and me.

I was the guy he still called Dad, though he knew I wasn't his real dad because when he was old enough to understand, I told him the story. As he got older he wanted to know more about his dad, but I didn't tell him much except what his dad and I did together in high school. He wouldn't have understood then.

Along the way, Alice's dad made me his business partner, and Alice gave me two daughters, Emily and Susan. I love them like life itself, but it was Alice who taught them how to be women. I concentrated on teaching Little Ricky how to be a man.

I knew I was succeeding when he wanted to be called Rick instead of Little Ricky, and I knew that even more when he told me of his plans after high school.

"I want to go to college, Dad. I want to be a civil engineer and build things like you and grandpa do."

I said that was great. Rick smiled and said that wasn't all he wanted to do.

"Remember that time I got into trouble at school? You grounded me for a month and told me I needed to grow up and start acting like a man. You said the Army would make me do that but I was too young so you were going to have to do it.

"I went down to the Army recruiter's office on Saturday. He said if I signed up for ROTC at college, when I graduate I'll go into the Army as an officer. That's what I'm going to do. I figure if the Army was good for you and Grandpa, it'll be good for me too."

I'd remembered Ricky then, and had a short panic attack.

"Rick, I understand why you want to do this, but did the recruiter tell you that Combat Engineers get shot at as much or more than the infantry and they're out in the open on machines instead of in a hole or a bunker?"

He grinned.

"No, but I already knew that. I figure if you and Grandpa survived I can too."

I knew there was no changing his mind. He was just as hard headed as his dad. I was proud of him though.

He was wearing Captain's bars now, and had decided to make the Army a career. After we sat down on the porch he smiled.

"I didn't know grandpa had earned all those medals until today. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't tell you because I didn't know either. Your grandpa didn't tell anybody about what he did in the war except me, and he didn't even tell me much about what he did. He didn't want any special treatment or sympathy. He just wanted what the preacher said today, to be the best person he could be."

Rick frowned.

"You never talk about Vietnam either."

"No, I don't. Before you went to Iraq, you wouldn't have listened, and afterward...well, I think you must understand why now. I've never heard you say much about Iraq or Afghanistan either."

Rick nodded.

"No, because of what happened the first time I was in actual combat. We were working on repairing the road to our base on my first tour. The day before, a truck had hit an IED. The charge blew the hell out of the truck, killed everybody inside, and made one hell of a hole in the roadbed. We were just starting to fill in the hole when a couple of guys popped out from behind a house and started shooting at us. I was standing behind an endloader when I heard the AK fire.

"It only took me a couple of seconds to get where I could see them and I got them both before they could shoot anybody else, but Dave and Mitch were already down. I remember wondering afterwards if those two men had wives and kids or not. There wasn't any way to tell because they had no identification on them but I still wonder.

"I also wonder why I'd moved to the side of the endloader when I did. A few seconds before that, I'd been standing in front of it with Dave and Mitch and talking about how we were going to repair the hole. I'd just walked around to the side where my transit was when the shooting started. If those guys had been a little sooner...

Rick was silent for a while after that and I had to smile. He sounded a lot like his grandpa and I suppose a lot like me. I realized then it was almost the same conversation I'd had with Alice's dad that day at Ricky's wake, except I was now the old combat veteran talking to the young combat veteran.

We'd have talked some more if Alice hadn't opened the door and said, "Hey, you two. I need my two men back inside with me."

We'll talk again...sometime when we both think we need to talk. It won't be reminising about the good old days in the Army like some people think. That's because that's what they hear combat vets talk about in front of other people. In private, the conversation might start out that way, but it will end with faltering words, maybe a tear or two, and then silence while they remember what can't ever be forgotten.

Epilogue

Combat veterans don't expect other people to understand why they don't talk about their days in combat or why they have tears in their eyes when they hear the pimple-faced high school trumpet player play "Taps" at the annual Memorial Day Service in every city and town across the US.

There's a reason they don't talk about combat. They've been where people should never have to go, seen what people should never have to see, and done things people should never have to do. Those who were lucky came back and they don't talk about it because they're trying hard to forget. None of them will ever be able to forget. A lot of them haven't yet come to grips with why they came back and others didn't.

There's another reason that brings tears to their eyes and causes them to stand at attention while the mournful notes of "Taps" render everything silent except the tweeting of the birds and the sigh of the breeze. They're remembering the men and women who didn't get to come home. In all wars they're young - still just boys and girls, really - too young to buy a drink in a bar and too young to vote, but not too young to die for their country.

They made the ultimate sacrifice, and the ones who did come back can't forget those who made that sacrifice. We can't afford to forget them either. We should be ashamed of ourselves if we ever do.