Who Has Not Heard Them?

Listen Now!

It was the spring of 1970 and I was awaiting notification from the draft board concerning my application as a Conscientious Objector. I was in my last year at Knox College where we received notification of the death of Cleave Bridgman. Cleave was a year ahead of me, a tall blond, probably 220 pound tackle on the football team, and he was a graduate of the Reserve Officer Training Corps. Cleave was married, and one of the gentlest, friendliest people I knew.

Shortly after his marriage, his tour of duty in Viet Nam began in October of 1969. He served as Forward Observer and then Fire Direction Officer for his artillery regiment. He and another soldier were killed in an artillery attack. He received a Silver Star, Purple Heart, and an Air Medal, and left family and friends in shock, disbelief, and grief. Cleave was 23 years old.

In 1992, when I visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.,

I found Cleave’s name on the long polished black granite wall, filled, now, with over 59,000 names. Twenty-five thousand of those are names of men twenty years of age or younger.

Archibald MacLeish, as a young man, “served as an artillery officer in World War I. He witnessed suffering and death on the battlefields of Europe. During the Second World War, he served… as the Librarian of Congress while still writing poetry. When, in 1943, the Library of Congress held a memorial service for all its staff members who had died in the war, MacLeish contributed his powerful poem that not only commemorated the dead, but also made it clear that those who survived bear a special responsibility to make the deaths of these soldiers meaningful.”

Who Has Not Heard Them?
Archibald MacLeish

The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses:
who has not heard them?
They have a silence that speaks for them at night
and when the clock counts.
They say: We were young. We have died.
Remember us.
They say: We have done what we could
but until it is finished it is not done.
They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished
no one can know what our lives gave.
They say: Our deaths are not ours: they are yours,
they will mean what you make them.
They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for
peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say,
it is you who must say this.
We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.
We were young, they say. We have died; remember us.

I went to the web site for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, to see if I could find more information about Cleave Bridgman. A soldier friend of his has posted a picture taken in Viet Nam. There he is, just as I remember him, tall and handsome, still in his early twenties.

What does it all mean?

“We have given our lives…

they will mean what you make them.

It is you who must say.

We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.”

That picture of Cleave, young and bold, leaves me wondering about our lives, and the possibilities that were snuffed out forty years ago.

My life has been full: marriages and family, graduate school, ordination, a ministerial career of thirty-three years, opportunities to travel, to see the world, to engage in the social questions of our age, to experience revolutions in technology, space exploration, and human liberation.

What might Cleave’s life have given the world?

What love is absent from our lives, gone with those who gave their last full measure of devotion?

And I wonder about how we use the military to induce people into being perpetrators violence. What if Cleave could have chosen an officers training program learning international peace negotiations? Instead we arm our children with war toy training. How different is the electronic war game of the ten year old and the commanding of a drone attack in Pakistan? The further we are removed from seeing another human being eye to eye, the better able we are to dehumanize them.

We offer monetary, educational, and skill-development incentives in return for military service. For many young people military service seems like the only alternative to a bad situation. Recruiters are not known for giving tours of veterans’ hospitals and memorials. On Memorial Day we honor those who died in service to our country, and we mourn with those who have lost limbs, and loved ones, and whose lives will always have a vacancy.

I know I do not speak for everyone of my generation when I question the meaning of the wars of my lifetime. I was raised with a different understanding of war. My grandfather, in World War I, was a flight instructor, teaching pilots to fly Curtiss Jenny biplanes at Kelly airfield in San Antonio. And my father helped repair damaged ships in World War II, when he served in the Navy, right here in the San Francisco Bay. One was the war to end all wars, and the other was the great triumph of democracy over fascism.

We were seen as a great nation, respected in the world, standing up for principles of equality, peace, and justice. But, since then, from my perspective, we have misused our power. Fearing a domino effect that never happened we caused the deaths of untold hundreds of thousands in Southeast Asia. Fearing weapons of mass destruction we enmeshed ourselves in Middle Eastern wars for two decades. The casualty counts rise: soldiers, civilians, families, children, the environment.

Caskets, prosthetics, depression, Post Traumatic Stress, suicide, repressed anger, stories not told so realities are not understood: soul deaths rippling out for generations.

The casualty counts rise: a mother of an eight-year-old reminds me that her son has never known a time when the United States was not at war.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates estimated the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would cost nearly $136 billion in 2009. That’s half the total cost of higher education in the United States in 2002.

“We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.”

Did they die for peace, for cooperation among nations?

The meaning of their deaths depends on us.

We always are leaving to the future, to the coming generations, the results of our efforts. Be they millions of gallons of oil spoiling the Gulf of Mexico, the newest pictures of deep space, or wreaths placed at the sites of those killed by violence, we leave the legacy of our greed or gratitude, each day, in each moment.

We leave the meaning of our lives for those who follow to evaluate.

This Memorial Day, the lives given by so many, the words of Archibald MacLeish, all call us to reflect on what positive images we want to leave for the future.

For what are we willing to give our lives?

What are we willing to love so dearly we will give the last full measure of our devotion to make sure it lasts into the next, and the next generations?

We want to show that peace and justice are possible.

We want to make the United Nations the center of attempts at global peace and development.

We want to leave a legacy of sustainability.

We want to develop alternative energy sources, reduce the amounts of energy we use, and make it clean.

We want green technology, blue skies, and clear, fresh water.

We want to leave a legacy of hope, of education for all.

We want to learn how, and to model how, to live in a multicultural world, within our homes, our schools, our workplaces, our houses of worship.

We want to leave a legacy of equality of opportunity, health care, food, and shelter. We want equal opportunity for people of all sexual orientations.

This week the House of Representatives and the Senate Armed Services Committee passed measures that would overturn the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law that bans homosexual activity in the military and requires gay and lesbian troops not to discuss their sexual orientation. We have remedied inequality in the military due to race and gender. It is time to give the estimated 65,000 gay and lesbian service personnel equal rights. It is time to leave countries like Iran, Yemen, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia who also do not allow gay and lesbian people to serve openly, and join the twenty-five nations, like Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and Israel, who do.

Tina Stidman is a retired US Army Staff Sergeant, a lesbian, and a member of our Unitarian Universalist congregation in Auburn, CA. She writes:

“As a Unitarian Universalist, I think of our 1 st Principle:  [affirming] ‘The inherent worth and dignity of every person.’  I wish that the U.S. military would apply that to all of our service members, just as they have with different races and genders…In observance of Memorial Day, please place a phone call to your Congressional Representative and your U.S. Senator, urging them to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”  It is time to protect the rights of gay service members, enabling them to serve openly and honestly.”

“We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.”

When I visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial webpage for Cleave Bridgman, there was an entry from a friend, dated April 10, 2010. It says:

Dear Cleave, Today a beautiful stone bench was dedicated to you in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. It's at the head of the harbor within sight of your former home.

It's got your name and honors inscribed on it...There were probably 80 people present including politicians and soldiers past and present, and quite a few flags from many of the service organizations... I was honored to represent the men… with whom you served as Forward Observer.

You served with honor and the friendships you developed remain to this day... You may rest in peace knowing you are loved and missed and will never be forgotten by your friends and family and military brothers.

Charles Brown, Marion, Ma.

Later, I learned that Cleave’s grandfather was a Congregationalist minister, and his parents were members of the First Unitarian Church in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

All our lives are touched by war.

Some of us have seen it closer than others.

It is for all of us to give it meaning.

It is for all of us to offer the world a vision of hope, that all those young dead soldiers may rest in peace, and the generations of tomorrow join hands around this bluegreen earth.

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/lyrical/poems/dead_soldiers.html

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan would cost almost $136 billion for the 2009 budget year that began Oct. 1 if they continue at their current pace. Reported by CBS News, January 7, 2009.

Linda Gorman (2009-12-05). "State Education Subsidies Shift Students to Public Universities". National Bureau of Economic Research.

For a complete study of nations (25) including gays in the military see: http://www.palmcenter.org/files/GaysinForeignMilitaries2010.pdf

from an email circulated by Rev. Lindi Ramsden, Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry of California.