Keeping Track
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Keeping Track I got a note from a mother who lost her son. Neat lady. She suffers her loss in quiet dignity. She told me once that she wanted to have her son near her, so she could visit. But her son, a pal of mine, had said he wanted to be in Arlington , if things came to that, and when it did, she bowed to his wishes. I wrote her back to assure her that we were keeping track. There is a regular list I have, when I walk to her son’s grave. It is better to walk. Driving makes too much pass by too fast. There is a U-2 pilot named Fred who is in the block next to Dan, and I stop to chat with him regularly. I had his job one time, and there was a report that his ghost haunted the space in the Pentagon where he had his last frustrating tour. He was a good guy, though he couldn’t make the system work any better than the rest of us. I always think of him with his space helmet under his arm, ready to mount up his aircraft. That was the picture I had in the office before the airplane crashed in down below and everything changed. Captain Frank is up the hill a little ways. I was at his service, with the horses and the gun carriage. He was perhaps the best of our OpIntel analysts from the Cold War, and I always say “Hi” when I am walking from the back gate the opens on Fort Myer down to the plain where the 9/11 memorial lies across the highway from the Pentagon. The Columbarium is home to a crusty old army Colonel who conned me into being Cubmaster when my boys were little- he actually would not let me get down from the tree I was working in until I agreed- and Mike who was the Fleet Intelligence Officer on my last Med Cruise is in the sector not far from there. Bill just passed last month- he had 39 years service and is coming home to Arlington next month from his retirement in Alliance , Ohio . I’ll try to be there for the internment, but even if i don’t make it, I will add him to my list of regulars. I will be there at some point. I don’t know where, of course, and am in no particular hurry. What with the latest wars and the passing of the Greatest Generation, two thousand a day, there was concern that we would run out of space in Arlington . That is unconscionable, and the authorities have taken steps to remedy the real estate problem. They say they are going to rip down the Navy Annex and expand the cemetery in that direction, and they are bulldozing the old scrub trees down to clear more space toward Route 110. I think it would be a hoot if I was interred near where my desk was at the Bureau of Personnel; I always thought I would not want to spend eternity looking at BuPers, but now being buried under it has a certain satisfaction. Except for that damned Air Force Memorial they are building where Op-01 used to be. It is not a sad place, though of course there is great sadness about the loss of the men and women who lie there. In fact, it is a place of affirmation and courage, and a unique comradery for those of us who still walk among them. I wrote my pal’s mother and told her we keep track, and we don’t forget. We can’t. Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra www.vicsoctra.com |
