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My Brother, the Marine

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I’m thinking of my brother today on Memorial Day.

He was a Marine.

The purpose of Memorial Day is to remember those who died while serving in the military – a noble and worthy holiday to honor those who sacrificed themselves for our country. Argue if you wish with the logic behind some of the wars where so much has been lost. Regardless, the people who died made an unselfish commitment to fight on our behalf, regardless of risk. It is right to honor that.

But not every member of armed forces who dies does so facing an enemy in battle. The military is a machine that runs on the energy of young men and women and their willingness to do dangerous things. And as a result, it chews people up in unexpected ways and for dumb reasons, or no reason at all. Planes and helicopters crash, ships collide, rifles misfire, minds snap and bad things happen. There is carnage on the front lines but also on the bases and on the training grounds. In every case it is heartbreaking and the price is steep. Payment is usually immediate, though sometimes it takes years.

My brother Lee is one of those who paid in installments.

Lee did not die while enlisted in the Corps, but his death and his service are intertwined and when I reflect on his passing I think of him as a military casualty even though he was a 57 and living alone in an apartment in Irvine California at the time – not in uniform, not on a military base and far from any battlefield.

His passing was the result of a Hepatitis C infection contracted over 35 years ago – a consequence of a transfusion of tainted blood from a time long before the more stringent donation screening of today. Hepatitis C remains hidden – there are no symptoms in the early and middle stages so he didn’t know he had it until decades after the transfusion.

Lee needed to receive large amounts of blood because he had been attacked by one of his fellow Marines – an angry brother-in-arms who felt he had been passed over for promotion.

Lee’s wounds were severe and he almost died in the hospital. He was stabbed in the stomach while hiding, using a phone to call for help. His assailant saw the phone cord winding under the desktop and lunged with his weapon. Why? It’s like so many violent things today – there is no logic. It certainly was not the kind of heroic face-off you see in the action films. My brother and those with him were only prepared to shoot with cameras. Help came too late for two Marines, who died on the scene. Three others were injured.

Man and Cat, at home
Man and Cat, at home

Oddly, Lee had transferred to the photo lab from a much more pressurized and risky assignment. He had been a Military Policeman, and had he remained one he would have been called on to respond to this attack. You might expect taking pictures to be a safe way to serve out a term in the Marines, but not in this case.

In the years that followed, my brother focused on his photography business and volunteering at the local animal shelter. He remained proud of his connection to The Corps, though he was reluctant to talk about the incident or his attacker.  Yet the disease he had picked up as a result of it was already inside, doing its work.

I believe his strategy in dealing with this calamity was simply not to dwell on it. You could ask about his health but my brother had perfected his shrug and he was not interested in examining his personal problems with you. Next subject?

Although his story is not going to make it into a war movie, I think of Lee on Memorial Day, and every day, as someone whose life was changed and ultimately lost because he made a choice to serve.

Who do you think of on Memorial Day?

54 thoughts on “My Brother, the Marine”

  1. dale i think of your brother whenever i see one of those recumbent bicycles on the road. thnaks for remembering him here today, a touching story and a wonderful remembrance. its so hard to find a way to accept all the random acts that affect our lives and your brother certainly had an odd combination of circumstances play major roles in his life and therfore in yours.
    when i think of veterans one of the directions my brain goes first is my dad, he was 15 when pearl harbor happened and his two older brothers went off right away from fargo north dakota to the heroic battles overseas. the oldest to italy in the infantry and the middle to an aircraft carrier where they had eventful soldier/sailor careers. he turned 16 two weeks after pearl harbor and watched and waited while the neighborhood in fargo had all the boys heading off to war. he signed up for the navy and went off on the train to ling beach to begin his adventure. in long beach they did the aptitude tests and discovered he had a natural set of talents that would make him the ideal fighter pilot and so he went with that. he tested very well and wa sabout to be sent off to flight training school when they discovered he had a hearing condiditon that disqualified him from flying. he couldnt hear a clicking sound like the blinkers on a car or two nickles tapping together and this is how the sent code to the pilots over the headphones on flight missions at that time. away witht he visions of becoming a pilot in the skies of the 1940 and back to the aptitude tests. the next thing he tested strongly for was a medic. he got stationed in long beach at the hospital where guys would be sent back after being injured and he would help them get ready to get to the next step. maybe med school huh? he was good at parts of it and was appreciated by the guys he helped out and very good at massage and had a wonderful touch when fixing wounds and changing bandages (memories form my youth) but he couldnt stand the sight of blood. not a good trait in a medic and something that could easily have been missed in the aptitude tests. he developed ulcers and was sent home. luckily it was about the time the war ended and the embarrassment associated with a medical discharge was lessened greatly by our victories overseas. his buddies all got home within weeks of his getting home and on in life they went to blaze the trials of american saga in the 50’s and 60’s. my dad learned massage in the war and gave the best back rubs ever to all of us kids as we grew up. i turned into a back rub giver and my kids are all recipients of grandpas training. they in turn have become good back rub givers and so goes the circle of life. the glamour and glory of being a fighter pilot lost and replaced by an appreciation for the sense of touch. an nice but unexpected trade off from his mission to help his country. he wasnt a hero. just a guy who went to find his fate given to him in a sideways delivery that like many things along the way determine things in a small way or a big way who you turn out to be.

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    1. I like that notion of a “sideways delivery”, tim. That, and the back rub legacy started by your dad. How many generations hence will your family be known for its massage skills?

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      1. my kids and theirs will spread the rub. they are all good at giving and receiving. i thought all families did that with a stiff neck or a pulled muscle or best of all for no reason other than affection but found out not to many do. i taught them how to feel for the knot or stress point they are working on and they give it back to me now as i get knotted up just sitting in a damn chair. youngest sprained her ankle on the trampline yesterday and came to ask for me to rub the spot and get blood folowing bac into it so it could heal up properly. i was the naturopathic doctor on all my kids athletic teams fixing thumps and bruises. we had a nurse practitioner who was really upset when i refused asperin for my kids bonk on the elbow with a pitch but she sure was happy i was there to look after her kid on te 100 degree tournament weekend when he had a heat stroke. cooled him down with a damp cool rag and a massage to get it worked into the muscle tissue. oldest daughter is the most frequent dispenser of massage to others but oldest son was my favorite therapist when i broke my foot and wanted deep work to blast the scar tissue out of there. young daughters thumbs and elbows blast deep into my spine regularly. i am certain that when the next generation comes along my dads massage will be passed on.
        did you get to head back to illinois to see your dad this weekend?

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        1. We are a back rubbing family, too. Son still expects a “back rub-scratch rub ” from his dad whenever they get together.

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  3. Good morning. My Dad had a military uniform which I think came from being in an ROTC program for college students that gave them military training. He missed serving in WW II because he was needed to keep electric power plants running in this country. His brother was killed serving in that war.

    I had a medical deferment that kept me out of the draft. I gave draft counseling to students who were apposed to the draft. Some people who served in Viet Nam thought that they were dishonored by the actions of anti-war students like myself. I haven’t mistreat anyone who served in Viet Nam or any other war. One of the people I think about on memorial day is a friend who refused to be drafted and when to jail.

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    1. For those of us who lived through the divisive period of the war in Vietnam, I think Memorial Day will always be a celebration fraught with emotional pitfalls. I have friends who served in that war and who are still alive. One was a medic, and he’s so deeply scarred by the experience that he’s still haunted by it, and I suspect he always will be. I also had friends who served in Vietnam who didn’t make it back, their lives wasted for a cause some of them didn’t believe in. Like, Jim, I also have friends who moved to Canada or served time in jail rather than join the military; the price they paid for those choices often very high. It’s certainly very sobering to think of all the young men and women who have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, to say nothing of their families. And, don’t forget the huge loss of civilian life in those countries. On Memorial Day I don’t visit cemeteries but instead spend time reflecting on why we can’t seem to end this senseless
      carnage.

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  4. then i think about gopher. mark ward was nicknamed gopher. he was exactly what you would expect a guy named gopher to be. a buck toothed pop bottle bottom glasses kid a little slow on the uptake and kind of bumpkinesque in his approach to life with muscles just like gomer pyle . we were a fast moving crowd with fights and fast cars and hot babes and beer parties on weekends and nobody messed with us and gopher was there too off to the side and in a slot he would certainly be fulfilling for the forseeable future. well gopher surprised us all and went and joined the marines. oh we laughed and laughed and sent gopher off to the usmc to have them shape him into a man. lo and behold he came back a year later built like a brick schwartzenager house and walking with an aire of self confidence that was not present when he left. i lost track of mark and dont know how he made out but he was the example i think of when i see the semper fi bumbper stickers of those other jar heads out there, he was a stoop shouldered little whipping boy when he left and came back with a new identity. kinda like the movies except bloomington mn 1968.

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    1. Good story, tim, but let’s not forget the veterans whose lives have been devastated by military service. For every success story, I’m afraid there are compelling stories that attest to the broken spirits and bodies produced by that same system.

      My closest friends at the American embassy in Moscow were the Marine guards, we hung out a lot together. Several of them were later killed in Vietnam. They prided themselves on the fact that the Marines didn’t draft people, they were all volunteers. At the time, I didn’t see or understand that each and every one of them had a sense of unquestioned patriotism that I’d find very disturbing today.

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      1. Amen
        I don’t have any other stories like gophers
        Most are disturbing , menacing, anti war themed stories of an ill conceived poorly organized, two year hitch in nightmarish conditions. Today we call it post tramatic stress syndrome
        Then we just called it shell shock and the way it goes in war.
        Choices are difficult all through life but war at 18 is as tough as it gets

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  5. I was moved by Dale’s memories of his brother, but thought I don’t have any similar recollection of a fallen soldier. Then I thought of Gary.

    When I was editing the outdoors magazine, wannabe writers would contact me and try to sell articles. Most were as bad as you would imagine. One day, however, a lanky Irish guy named Gary offered me two articles he’d written. Gary had been a terrible student in high school English, cutting classes to go duck hunting, and he knew his writing was primitive. But he was so deeply humble and so genuinely expert in his grasp of hunting and fishing that I bought those first two stories.

    Gary went on to have a career as an outdoor writer that was more successful than mine. There are three ways outdoor writers can succeed: 1) they write well, 2) they know how to suck up to editors and get assignments or 3) they actually know something about hunting and fishing. Way number 3 is the hardest and least-likely path to success, but Gary had the knowledge and integrity to make it work.

    Several years ago Gary was afflicted with terrible pain in his face. After months of testing, the Mayo Clinic docs told Gary he had cancer in his facial nerves. It is a rare, rare type of cancer, mostly because the pain is so exquisite that most victims kill themselves before they can be diagnosed.

    A year ago I tried to talk to Gary on the phone. His wife told me Gary was in too much pain to speak, but that he was eager to talk to me. She said he’d call when he could. Well, a year went by, and Gary was never sufficiently pain-free to chat. She let me know that he would eventually die of that cancer.

    I used to talk to Gary about his experiences in the Army in Vietnam. He was extremely reluctant to talk about that, and yet he burned with the memory of what happened over there. I know he killed several people in face-to-face encounters, an experience that haunted him. I just read a few weeks ago that Gary’s cancer probably started with his exposure to Agent Orange. Gary is alive today, if just barely, but I will mourn his memory as a fallen soldier of a misbegotten war.

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    1. Wow, I’ve never considered the possibility of facial nerve cancer. Ugh! Thanks for telling us about Gary, Steve.

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    2. ive told my agent orange story on the blog before about the guy whose job it was to shovel it onto the helicopters to drop on the jungles. all aspects of war are tragic but this is such an obvious case of terrible supervision of an obviously toxic substance it makes you wonder what the heck they were thinking

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      1. When were were in grad school, David Balle was one of the favorite dads that would play with all the little kids in married student housing. He died years later, probably from his contact with Agent Orange. Thanks for the memory, I’d like to honor him today.

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  6. Thanks for writing about your brother, Dale. Another tragic tale of a life how military service often impact people’s lives long after their tour of duty is over.

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    1. I like to talk about my brother, PJ. Although he died too young, he was really a happy, friendly person. The people he volunteered with at the animal shelter were his second family, and they enjoyed each other’s company and support in the thankless work they were doing. Too bad there’s not a Marine Corps set up specifically to serve neglected and abandoned pets – he would have been a lifer!

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      1. heather mcelhatton who i first heard on your show i believe is a friend on facebook and is putting together a load of stuff to take to oklahoma to aid the animals that got hurt in the tornados. she is doing good work and if anyone has the inclination ill bet shed welcome a hand or a box of dog or cat treats. i can send a link if you are interested. i dont see it on her facebook page but i hooked up with her on facebook somehow

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        3. The link doesn’t work, tim, please check that you’ve posted it correctly. Thanks.

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        4. Maybe you have to be her friend on face book

          Look up heather mcelhatton on Facebook
          Ill try again when I get back
          If you want an address to provide stuff to I can give you that off blog

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  7. my friend randy was a quiet kid with a good laugh and a sharp mind that made him a background friend who didnt require a lot of maintenance. we were just juniors or seniors in high school when we go t word his brother had been killed in the barracks by some guy like your brothers attacker, an american who had gotten lost along the way. its hard to deal with the inexplicable intrusion on the every day expectations that come at you for no apparent reason but there is also no choice but to figure it out. we had a small neighborhood and only a total of 20 or 30 guys that age in the 3 block by 3 block area so you knew when the events of one of the families life took a hit. randy masked his pain and got on with it. his dad never did. scars of battle take many forms and we all d the best we can.

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  8. We went to New Town, ND on Saturday, on the Ft Berthold Indian Reservation, to see two dear friends of our who just moved there to work as addiction counselors.The husband of the pair is a tribal member. It was the weekend of the Memorial Day Pow Wow, which is held in honor of native members of the armed services. Military service is a really big deal in Indian country, and all the veterans marched in the Grand Entry, leading in all the elaborately costumed dancers. It was great fun, and we got to see our newest senator, Heidi Heitkamp. She was there dancing in the grand entry, too, as she had been recently installed as a honorary member of the The Affiliated Tribes American Legion Women’s Auxiliary. It took her a while to get the rhythm and the footwork, but she had it by the end of the march.

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      1. sounds like a possible commercial opportunity. ill bet mb would look like a duck on the dance floor. graves would dance like every high school senior. (come to think of it it may scare away the youth vote)

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  9. my life wage affected by the viet nam war in what felt like huge realazations about who i was and who i wasnt in 9th grade. i am always amazed as my kids hit this age at how young they are. i was so old. i saw the viet nam thing happening ans i was going to the university of minnesota protests and seeing the police show up in their gas masks and crowd control gear. rallys out side the rotc headquarters at morrill hall and speakers who were less than articulate talking about the war man with long hair and no good story droaning on and on but the side conversations and the root of the cause was strong and the essence rang true. the lottery was taking boys (18 is so young) to go fight in that schitzo fight over in nam and i wasn’t going. civil disobedience, protests conscientious objector jail canada? heck i was in 9th grade trying to figure it out. i wasnt going that was certain. i was not going to have anyone explain to me why and how it was justifiable to kill someone over the disagreement with another political entity i didnt agree with. one night dick gregory, an activist comedian of the 60’s was talking about his protests and also talking about his being a vegetarian and although his were unrelated my tying the two together were not. respect for life was my anti war theme and vegetarianism was a wonderful way to live that belief so at that moment i made my switch to no living things dying by my hand. eggs and milk…. geeze picky picky picky… leather shoes? mosquitos? i will choose my hypocrisy very carefully and learn to be comfortable with it. i was up for the draft in 74 and the lottery ended in 72 i believe but what a lasting mark on me and my value basis for life going forward. i often feel like the kids today are such young young people because there is nothing of consequence to kick them in the ass. viet nam was many things but it was certainly something that got my attention and kicked me in the ass.

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  10. Thanks for your story about Lee, Dale. I’m glad you like to talk about him – it is a form of healing to tell their stories. Besides my son Joel (who I wrote about last Memorial Day), I remember my friend Denny Weyker who died in Vietnam in 1968. We were all relieved when, like Lee, he had snagged a “safe” job, being the secretary to two colonels. That all changed when their buildings were mortared. He was funny, smart, but not disciplined enough to stay in college and avoid the draft. He taught me to dance, and we double dated sometimes. I still have his letters.

    I will have to read the rest later, as my sister is here…

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  12. These stories are haunting and tragic. I’ve never understood the war machine, much less the devastation to millions of young lives. I recently read that one vet commits suicide every 80 minutes around the clock, day after day. As to justification for war, I’m naive enough to view WWII as the last truly justifiable one. We send our young adults off to foreign lands to fight for what exactly????? Most often it seems just to settle some score of the politicians currently in power. Most often it seems ill-conceived and poorly thought out. I detest everything about war and have wondered for decades how it is that we don’t even have a “Department of Peace”.

    Last night on CNN, there was a special report on a growing organization to train and supply returning vets with therapy dogs. They showed video of these wonderful animals doing what they’re trained to do: cover the vet’s body with kisses and paw stroking when they sensed the
    vet in a hurting place; calm the vet with specific distracting behaviors when they sensed rage
    emerging; sitting quietly beside a lonely vet. It was so touching that it made me weep.

    I don’t understand war or why our nation is so eternally engaged in it.

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    1. At the pow wow husband saw a t shirt with an old photo of a bunch of Apaches with the caption “fighting terrorism since 1492”.

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      2. How very apt! A woman I knew in high school was Native American, and the first day I saw her she was wearing a beat up Army jacket that said “Custer died for your sins”. After high school, she was involved with protests and I believe had a boyfriend in the PLO. She was murdered 15-20 years ago — very likely for her personal beliefs.

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  13. I think of three vets from my parents generation: my dad, his brother and my great aunt. All were in WWII. My uncle fought in Europe and came back proud of his service and time in the military. He took advantage of the vets benefits and continued to be an unwavering, unquestioning patriot. My father was a company clerk in the Philippines and saw the Asian side of the war. He did not talk much about his service other than telling me that tropical butter and tropical chocolate (made to not melt in the heat) was awful. He did not use any of the vet benefits available to him. He was a pacifist, a liberal, and came away from the war believing in the power of democracy, but not the unswerving patriotism of his brother.

    Then there was my great aunt. I only have stories about her as she died before I was born. She was a nurse and a bit of a rabble rouser. She volunteered for service as an army nurse in WWII on the condition that she be sent overseas – she wanted to help where it was truly needed (“helping the boys”). She maintained friendships from her stint in the military and was proud of what she had done to help. The war instilled a bit of wander lust in her that continued throughout her life – the family joke is if there is some unidentifiable object around that we know came from a foreign country, chances are it is something Aunt Lillian brought back from her travels to India, Italy, Austria, Africa…She, I think, was best able of the three, to sift out the good from the bad and make use of her hitch without it overtaking her life and world view. I truly wish I had been able to spend evenings chatting with her.

    I will add my thanks for the Lee stories. I am glad he found a “tribe” and family with the animal shelter folks – he seems to have been a gentle soul.

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  14. Thanks for sharing that tribute Dale.

    We often drive through the local cemeteries and remember relatives not just on Memorial Day. So on this day we try to offer extra prayers for those who have served. One of the big cemeteries in Rochester lost a lot of trees and limbs due to the blizzard at the beginning of May. They had their work cut out for them getting the place cleaned up by this weekend.
    We remember friends and family who have served and offer our gratitude and thanks. And it seems so little.

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  15. Greetings! Thank you for sharing such a moving story about your brother, Dale. As some of you remember, my oldest son was in the Marines. As soon as he started high school, he got it in his head that he wanted to be in the Maines — no ifs, ands or buts — and we could not talk him out of it because they were “the best.” He put his name on the list at the high school office, so each year on his birthday, he got a letter from the USMC reminding him to work hard, get good grades and stay in shape so he could enlist early when he was 17. Two days after turning 17 on 9/1, he signed the pre-enlistment papers.

    When the Marine came to our house to give his presentation, Jim refused to be present. I sat with Nick and listened. The USMC has a very effective presentation aiming at a young person’s desire to be courageous, noble, honorable and dedicated. I was almost ready to sign up myself.

    Luckily, Nick only had one tour in Afghanistan and came out mostly unscathed and is now reaping the GI Benefits by going to college. He quickly soured on his noble ideals of the Marines once he got in, but he served his time well and we are very proud of him.

    Another person I think of is my brother-in-law, Tom. He served in the Marines in Vietnam in Force Recon — a rather elite unit that operated BEHIND enemy lines and he had a very harrowing time in the war and I’m sure still has nightmares about it. I believe he’s still in contact with other guys from his unit. I was surprised to learn that a group is still actively looking for and finding the remains of soldiers who died overseas to bring them home. He sent out an email to all of us recently about one of his unit members whose remains were found just this year that will be brought home and laid to rest on US soil.soon – and he plans to be there. A very fitting tribute.

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  16. Like tim’s dad, mine had a medical discharge from the Army for a stomach ulcer. He had to deal with stomach surgery later, but I thank God that he had something that got him out of that war.

    I think of my mom’s brother Bobby, who was shot down over rural France in 1943 and died. I have only met him in a dream, but he was her mentor, and was responsible for her desire to go to college. When her cousins who visited the French village in the late 80s told them why they were there, they were given a parade in his honor – he was considered to have saved their village.

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  17. My grandfather immigrated from Germany to Minnesota in the early 1900’s. He returned in early 1914 to see family and retrieve his mother and 4 sisters to live with him near Pipestone. He was conscripted into the German army during the visit. We are fortunate that he had really flat feet and couldn’t march and was as quickly discharged. He hightailed it back to Minnesota before the war started.

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