I did some grocery shopping on Monday to prepare for being cooped up in my apartment for 3 days.
The EEG technician, Jose, from Stratus showed up on Tuesday afternoon within the window of time that I was told. He got right to work setting up a camera in my sleeping area and in my living area. The reason for this is to look for unusual movements, staggering, stumbling, and issues with sleep. The next step was to place the electrodes on my head, using a water soluble glue and sometimes tape, following a pattern and checking his computer that each electrode was reading. The final step was to wrap my head in gauze to help keep the electrodes in place.
Needless to say, it was strange to have cameras watching me but I tried to ignore them and made sure that I dressed in the bathroom instead of the bedroom where I usually do. During the night, the gauze wrap came off and I had to call for advise the next morning. Over the next day and a half, it came off each time I slept and had to be rewrapped.
Jose showed up on Thursday afternoon to take off the electrodes and to take down the cameras. He told me that all went well with the recording and that I should get results from my doctor in 5-7 days. Fingers crossed that all is well.
Lois texted me Saturday morning to see if I was interested in going to the Landscape Arboretum and I took her up on her invite. It turned out to be a chilly morning but we still enjoyed the walk and seeing all of the spring flowering plants, especially the Azaleas that were so colorful and many of the tulips were still blooming. We went to Moe's Char House for a burger after our stroll through the gardens.
Norah's 6th grade band marched in the Memorial Day parade in Excelsior and I went with Ben and family. I couldn't help but remember the classmates that I lost during the Vietnam war. The little town had a small parade with a few military vehicles, the band, Eagle Scouts, and some classic cars. We went over to Lois' for a weenie roast afterward. Her yard is so pretty and relaxing.
My friend, Doug, wrote the following article for the Courier Hub:
For the past seven years The Courrier Hub has been gracious enough to publish my Memorial Day article and for the past seven years I have put it on my FB page to share with family and friends. This year's article resonates in particular with me, not that I was anyone important in the Vietnam War, but in what he said to his son. It takes me back 58 years.
In honor of General Lucian K. Truscott Jr. (1895–1965).
General Lucian King Truscott Jr. Born in 1895 in Chatfield, Texas. His family had very little. He never formally finished high school. At sixteen, he told a state school he was eighteen, already had his diploma and walked away with a teaching certificate. He was already building himself from nothing.
In 1917, he joined the cavalry. He learned everything he could from every exercise, and every man both above and below him in rank. He didn’t rise through politics or connections. He rose by being more prepared than everyone around him.
He commanded assorted units on his way up the ladder, including a full field army. He founded the Army Rangers. He won battles that changed the direction of the war in Europe, but the moment most worth remembering about him didn’t happen on any battlefield. It happened in a cemetery in Italy, on a warm May morning, when the general turned his back on the powerful and chose to speak only to the dead. He called them his responsibility.
It was May 30, 1945. Memorial Day. The Sicily-Rome American Cemetery at Nettuno, Italy. Rows of white temporary grave markers stretched across the sandy ground in every direction as far as the eye could see. Nearly 20,000 of them. Senators and dignitaries sat in folding chairs near the podium. A 23-year-old cartoonist named Bill Mauldin who had spent years drawing the honest and unglamorous truth of the ordinary American soldier sat quietly in the back row.
Truscott stepped up to the microphone. He acknowledged the crowd. Then he turned around. He faced the graves. His back completely to the dignitaries. In his distinctive rough and gravelly voice, a voice that, as Mauldin once wrote, made other strong men go quiet, he apologized to the dead.
He said that leaders are always reassured that the deaths in war are never their fault. That such losses are simply inevitable. He said every honest leader knows deep in their heart that is not entirely true. He said he had made mistakes. Perhaps many of them. He asked the dead to forgive him. He knew it was asking for something impossible. He asked anyway.
He said he would not stand there and speak about the glorious dead — because he saw absolutely nothing glorious about young men in their teens and twenties lying in the ground. He made a promise that if he ever heard anyone use that phrase, he would personally set them straight. "It is the least I can do," he said.
No written transcript exists of that speech. No recording was ever made. We know what took place only because of Bill Mauldin — and never forgot what he witnessed. He called it the most moving gesture he had ever seen in his life. "It came from a hard-boiled old man who was incapable of planned dramatics."
Lucian Truscott died in 1965. Eisenhower ranked him among the six most valuable American officers in the entire European theater of the war. Biographers largely passed over him for decades anyway.
Every Memorial Day, remember the ones who carried the weight quietly and completely without fanfare. The ones who never needed a spotlight to know who they were. The ones who turned toward the graves instead of the cameras. Lucian Truscott was one of those men. "The bodies, the bodies, all those dead boys, the bodies…" His only words about the war, spoken through tears to his son, the night before his son left for Korea.
“We who have seen war, will never stop seeing it. In the silence of the night, we will always hear the screams.”- Joseph L. Galloway
Thank you to Lucian K. Truscott IV and Bill Mauldin for your story and the inspiration.
Doug Olson – USN
Vietnam, Tet Offensive 1967-68
