Published: May 24, 2008 07:25 pm      

Come see for yourself, if you don’t understand

A friend of mine is a minister, and we met one day while I was wearing my gray POW/MIA (Prisoner of War/Missing in Action) T-shirt that displays the silhouette of a downturned face with a guard tower and barbed wire in the background and the caption “You Are Not Forgotten.”

My friend despises the thought of war and rightly believes there is a better use for human life. I tell him I’m not the one he needs to convince. It would be wonderful if everyone felt the way he does, but that’s not the case.

He pointed to my shirt and, with absolute sincerity, asked “How much longer will this go on, do you think?”

Until all of them are accounted for and returned to their families, I said. Which war they were involved in doesn’t matter. They’re all the same.

“That means pretty much forever, doesn’t it?” he asked.

Pretty much, I said. He nodded, and I knew he understood. His father was one of those who had to fight against Hitler.

As of last month, four American servicemen were listed as Missing in Action or captured in Iraq, one of them (Navy Capt. Michael Speicher, a pilot) since the 1991 Gulf War. The remains of a fifth were recently recovered. Unidentified American remains from other wars are frequently recovered, and great effort is made to identify them.

Why is it so important? We owe it to them, for one thing.

Another of my friends was a POW in Korea. He’s never talked to me about it, but when he and his wife went to the Korean War Memorial dedication in Washington, he made sure that I got to see photos taken of him with the larger-than-life statues of soldiers that make up part of the memorial.

Those statues represent my friend and his brothers, and the pictures were worth thousands of words he didn’t need to say.

All Goldsworthys are related in some way, and there aren’t that many of us. Here are two I’ve found on the Internet.

Maj. Gen. Robert F. Goldsworthy (ret.) of Rosalia, Wash., was a bomber pilot and a POW in Japan for nine months. Twice, he was taken out for execution but was spared. He kept as a souvenir an order specifying how prisoners should be executed in the event the Japanese homeland was invaded. He is one of many WWII veterans who insists that the atomic bombs saved their lives.

U.S. Army Sgt. Robert J. Goldsworthy of Michigan has been MIA since the second day of the Battle of the Bulge. His name is on the Tablets of the Missing at Lorraine American Cemetery, St. Avold, France, but his whereabouts are — to borrow a phrase — known only to God.

That I’ve never met them doesn’t matter. They’re Americans who suffered in the extreme while defending our freedom.

It’s important for other reasons it helps to see for yourself.

Two years ago, 32 members of Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 172 went to Arlington National Cemetery for the funeral and interment of Grady Cooke, an Air Force cargo plane crewman who was killed in action in Vietnam and whose remains weren’t identified and returned for 34 years.

Two dozen motorcyclists from Patriot Guard Riders and Rolling Thunder, veterans who send contingents to veterans’ funerals all over the country, also showed up. I went as a reporter and a friend of the chapter.

Cooke’s brother, David Cooke, said during the services it was not a sad day for his family.

“My sad day was the day we lost him ... the day my mother and father were crying,” he said. “I’m glad to be here today to welcome him home.”

Cooke said he wears a black POW/MIA flag pin in his lapel that “some people say should now be going away. I wear it for all POWs and MIAs who should be coming home. That flag will not go away until all of them have returned home.”

I’ve worn one of those pins every day since then, and I’ve become friends with Cooke’s sister, Marie.

During the decades Grady was gone, “The sad thing was that there was nothing,” she said. “it was a gap that never healed. He’s always been here spiritually, but now he’s home and with his family. He’s with people who love him,” she said. Their parents and two of their grandparents are buried at Arlington.

She says she continues to be overwhelmed by the way men who didn’t even know her brother came to honor him and his family.

“These are great men who risked everything and still have never been adequately recognized for their services,” she told me recently. “But they are willing to drop everything after 34 years and travel to Arlington to welcome their brother home. How can you ever do anything to express what that means?”

Chapter 172’s Color Guard attends veterans’ funerals and participate in other functions, including a Round Table ceremony that honors POWs and MIAs.

One told me, “We wear those sunglasses with the shiny dark lenses when we do the Round Table because we don’t want people to see our eyes.”

He said they did a Round Table in the company of a band whose drum major was in the uniform of a British Army drum major.

“When ‘Amazing Grace’ was played, (the Color Guard commander) called ‘present arms’ and gave a hand salute, and this drum major marched up to him, came to attention and gave him a British-style hand salute.

“They stood face-to-face, saluting each other the whole time, and the tears were coming down everyone’s faces. Even the young girls in the band were crying, and they came up to us after they were done playing and wanted to know why it was so important.

“After we did the Round Table, those girls came up to us again and threw their arms around us and said, ‘Now, we understand.’ ”

Being a middle-aged civilian, I’m allowed to have tears that others can see, and I do so when I watch a Round Table. My first time, it was so riveting that I wasn’t even aware of standing through the entire ceremony.

Chapter 172 will have another Round Table today (Sunday, May 25) during a program to honor America’s POWs and MIAs. It begins at 2 p.m. at Cumberland’s Town Centre.

My friend Chip Sours will be the narrator, and if you don’t understand why it is so important, he and his colleagues will explain it to you.

Please come and join us.