War is loss.
I'm two months after the death of my Veteran mother.
Someone sent me an odd cryptic message today about the stages of "Sarah's" grief. I re-read
my blog a few days after she died-one they attached. I'm so glad I wrote this reflective blog- it has been thousands of hours, heart, intelligence, feeling. A dedicated effort and for all its flaws it is an example of who I am.
In it I have reflected for 7 or more years, on teaching and living, art, motherhood and tried to openly deal with life.
My school district has done a good job in shaming me over the effort, an excellent job, but I really have not failed to write to the difficulties, the successes, projects. Nor have I simply capitulated. But I am a person, I have parents, losses, wins, things change-I write that. The blog collects that. It is a good way to learn about yourself and today I experienced that.
How you evolve over time-it is a process of the evolution of your journey in this life. Or failure to evolve.
Two months after the death of my Mom I find myself re-carpeting the house.
I worked myself hard the last week or so boxing our life, cleaning, now unboxing. Twelve huge bookcases alone was a monster effort-despite promising to throw out half the books I discover we own incredible books. There is nothing lousy by and large to eliminate. Ten years wears out a carpet. Mom's coffee took a toll on it really. There were trails everywhere, as she shook fiercely after her strokes. She also loved coffee. She denied being a cause of this in the most vicious way-and that reminds me of one of the most strong things about her-she was not holding onto too much blame. All the time she and coffee were inseparable. It is lovely to see new carpet.
But truthfully without my Mom here-it just remains carpet. New, definitely cleaner, but I feel just as odd as I have for the last two months. As if this broken heart left some part of me here- but took the true me somewhere else. Is that a stage in grief?
It is Veteran's Day and I'm thinking of my mother.
On this day every year we'd talk about her brother Marshall Lucas. He died in Korea in that war. We'd talk about the service of her brother Charles, we'd talk about her service, and my father's, and then many others we knew. I'm going to attach a post called "Raw" I wrote at least three years past.
It is something I want here for my Aunt Merilee to read.
Her son carries his name-
and sometimes I forget that Marshall lives on in my lovely cousin's life.
That's so important.
Here's to our vets.
May those that survive, prosper. May those lost to time, may they be as honored as my Uncle was in having another generation carry their name forward -and their memory live on in them.
RAW
I'm going to take a little risk here.
My son Luca has been struggling in high school.
Nothing
of the structure works well for him, but he certainly doesn't hate it.
He's actually fond of it. His teachers don't complain of defiance or his
attitude other than to find him unmotivated, not at all defiant, he
just fell behind in a way a long time back. State scores are really
great though. They can reap that, it gets him in "honors." He went to
school at 4, not 5 and it's been the legacy of
the late bloomer with
a late birthday. His musical skills and his heart in sports all in this
uber thin small guy is just really incredible. But high school isn't
what he needs, yet.
At least not the way this is.
What he has been doing however I wish I could tell a teacher about.
I wish he had one
that cared to hear it from a "me." Free of a lecture to either of us on "responsibility." I know it, that talk, I teach too.
One teacher referred me to an on line grade check rather than this kind of a dialog.
But
I'd like to tell them my blocked intestine and the cancer might be on
his mind, up coming operation, the vomiting, a bit like a shadow.
Maybe.
I'd really like them
to help him with something else. Something impossible. Something too much for me to know how to deal with at all.
My
son is very bonded to my mother who, because I was so ill really helped
raise him. Or stepped in with comfort. Butter boy has been the apple of
her eye since the day he plopped into her arms. And for a school
project Luca interviewed my mom all about the second world war and her
remembrances. She also was his "hero" in a project not so
well graded this year. In that piece my son again went to her and she
shared something very timely, the story of the death of her
younger brother to war in Korea. Something very rare for her to speak
about. It might not seem timely on the surface until sitting on a Sunday
as you watch a PM news program present the US deaths for the week.
Look at kids that just stopped in time. And then you see why it is
right there for her. The clock that ticks for all of us-sadly it tolling for
my mum. And after one big stroke-and through this last month's mini strokes-signs
are telling her the time is at hand.
It kind of got me to see his
score on this project with her be lower, he put so much into this. To a
person unable to say to him, "that matters." in truth they have
invalidated our family in a great show of ignorance, but I am mostly
silent. It was such an invalidation, but from my child not a word,not a
bit of that at all. He "likes" them. But, then, I haven't met the
teachers.
And I can check the grade on-line.
That's high school. I guess for some.
Luca has continued to dig to find out about a 19 year old PFC lost in Korea
that doesn't even have a tribute
written about him in the Memorial sites. Marshall R. Lucas died in
Korea on patrol. That's all we knew. We knew Harold Osterud was the
older brother, a medic, to a close friend of Marshall's from their town
of Ashland Va that first got to him after death sending word to my
grandmother, Gladys Pearl H. Lucas, that he died "instantly." We knew
that. We knew that another soldier told my mom that prisoners weren't
taken, they were made to kneel and shot in the head by the Chinese
soldiers. Her brother was shot in the back of the head at close range.
Just that way.
We don't know what a day was like for him, what the
sun rise looked like there, if he knew people of the country, if he was
comfortable or not. We know he had been to R and R in Japan. What could
he have seen there? Did he understand the conflict? Do we ? My mom
probably does she spent her life discovering this thing I call national
reasons and rhymes. She had a few letters from him I once read but I
will tell you what I remember of this was they were like peeking into a
young person keeping something from their mom. They sound like my
daughter talking to me about her life now at 19 in CalTech. Ultimately
just reassurring. And making the best of something. Theses were not
revelatory. And how I saw those was utterly by stealth when I found them
in my father's closet. I think for years he held onto hem for my mom,
because she could not bring herself to read the youthful voice of a kid
sent to war. he has the strength for that.
And
we as a family each in our way know that our parents, my cousins and I,
we know this tore the fabric of the entire family. You can't really
know because I can't capture it. I will say this I have never heard my
family condemn other people, blame others, call for war....I have heard
them speak of WW2 and the loses, the families destroyed, the necessity
of that after attack in the face of loss of civilian life and the horror
in Europe, the nightmares faced. But of these actions after this, I
have heard almost nothing. My father lost friends in Korea, friends
serving with him years on Guam. I've heard him tell of that in a
sentence or two. I've seen his eyes mist. And they seldom really told us
everything because they don't know it either. It was a misting that
enclosed us, shrouded us. This loss and hurt included a different kind
of remembering in the naming of my cousin for this lost murdered
soldier boy. Not entirely understood in anyway andnow my son looking as
all of us do at the puzzles of family, then has found some different
pieces to reveal and try to fit into his part mostly because he was
willing to go look. And he cared so much about my mother's pain.
During
the time he talked to her she told him things I never heard before. And
I'm an oral history lover, well I value trying to understand. When you
talk of war that is not expressed by that sentence. It is so horrifying a
thought, I value trying to understand it's effect on us all. Because
from every position it is something that cannot be undone. But you don't
always think of the story of the killing of your uncle to war as
"history." You think of it as pain. Some things I never asked her.
Mom talked to Luca about why she herself went into the service.
She was in the Air Force. Both her brothers were in the service at the time of Korea, as was my father. Her younger brother
was drafted
out of VA, though he really was living in Florida with my grandmother
who had moved to St. Pete. He was drafted out of Hanover County,
Virginia. Mostly because the papers weren't changed in her recent move
to put him in St. Pete's system. Mom wondered if this didn't appeal to
the VA draft board in sending him off (in my mom's words) "to be
slaughtered." Mom's kind of bitter. You would be too if you considered
that where he died, the hill that was taken, just impotently reverted
back to the enemy. She says in many ways that stands for how she sees
war. I gather when MacArthur was stopped in his march into China...and
boys lives were lost in the mishigas of this. I don't want to appear
unaware this is felt all the way around, I want it however understood
that so often you just know nothing.
Now I have to
write carefully. I just learned more about her deep anger, feelings,
pain than I really knew drawn into words ever in my living with her
lifelong. I learned how they told the family of his passing, where she
was. How it was that 5 days after he died, Eisenhower was elected on a
campaign
to stop this war. As a
promise. She joined the service somehow in a form of solidarity with
brothers she feared might lose lives to , in her words, "Try to keep
myself occupied." Learned to fly a plane. Became socially conscious,
involved, aware. She had fear and she read a letter sent by the Service
signed by Truman saying her brother was dead, the day before Halloween
(my most hated holiday a time I wish I could wipe away for her forever
so she might not each year live it as she does.) Losing a young brother
at 19 with no girlfriend or wife yet or baby to mourn him, lost to
times, to a bullet. Stopped, almost forgotten, as her generation
passes. No one aside from my cousins, her family, have ever written or
contacted her about this life, this brother so dear to her. She carries
in her the wish it all meant something.
And she knows it doesn't, in her words, mean "anything." "He died for nothing."
War, in my mother's words, should be fought
by us oldsters.
Or ceases to exist. Pass away like a bad thought. Fought
by those instead that might send in kids to die as a "solution." These
things I heard her talk to my son about this last few months, and I
watched my young historian hold her gaze as a priest might, or a
confessor. As a child fully engaged in the greatest of life's learning
lessons might hold onto the hand of time. A child becoming the balm and
the memory, the receptacle of this job of helping her to ready herself
at over 80 for her journey
into no time
by gathering her greatest sorrow, to release it, and being willing to
witness this, to carry it into the days ahead. So it might not be
forgotten.
And then I can check the grades on-line.
I don't know what grade to give my son.
He
found the description of the battle that his uncle fought and died
there on patrol. It was called Operation Showdown. Its commander got a
Medal of Honor, he took it for the men like my 19 year old Uncle
Marshall Lucas who died there a lowly PFC that now isn't recalled. I
just don't know how to feel.
Luca found this
description of this battle for a hill and gave it to mom. He found out
that Dr. Osterund , the medic that couldn't resurrect a man shot in the
head, but could tell his mom it was "fast" went on to dedicate a life to
medicine in Oregon, to public health. His bother Carl, my uncle's
buddy, we don't know. We hope he lived, and lived well. For both of them
perhaps.
Luca found where we can tell his story so it
isn't forgotten, and he wrote all of it into a form that will remain for
him written inside, there all of his life, may I never be faced with
sending his tender being off to war or into things I do not know off to
die. He wants to join the service. It's tough. I am mostly silent with
this.
My son believes in things I don't always see. He
is young but all of his life he has known what he believes, been a
"self," he believes in love, his family, in Christ, in doing right
things. And in service.
So......here is the
story of where my Uncle died, it's taken from the web. It is more than
we ever thought to know. I hope I can be forgiven for placing it here:
Showdown
on Triangle Hill: twelve days of intense combat in October 1952 cost
the U.S. 7th Infantry Division 365 KIA for a piece of turf that
ultimately remained in enemy hands
In October 1952, the
U.S. 7th Infantry Division occupied a sector of the Main Line of
Resistance (MLR) in central Korea near Kumhwa. Opposing the division,
the Chinese 45th Division held elevations to the north, including Hill
598, also called Triangle Hill. Both sides were well dug-in. Battle
lines had not changed significantly in almost a year.
After peace
talks began in November 1951, the Eighth Army assumed an "active
defense" posture and combatants on both sides marked time awaiting the
outcome of the talks.
The
"War of the Hills" had begun. For six months, this war played out as
artillery/mortar exchanges and minor skirmishes that did little to
change the situation. Then, in spring 1952, as frustration over the
failure of peace talks increased, "active" defense gave way to active
engagement. Operation Showdown began to take shape.
Col. Lloyd
Moses, commander of the 7th Division's 31st Infantry Regiment, relates
in his memoirs, "Not long after my arrival in the 31st Infantry, the
division and corps commanders talked to me about an attack on Hill 598."
By June 1952, Moses wrote, plans were under way "to move our MLR
forward ... On 23 July, I began to make serious plans to capture Hill
598, should we be called upon to do so."
Hill 598 was a formidable
objective. The apex of its 2,000-foot triangular crest overlooked U.S.
7th Division positions on a line of hills about half a mile away to the
south. From this apex, two massive ridges extended to the northeast and
northwest. The ridge to the northwest was dominated by a hill called
Pike's Peak.
The other terminated with a pair of hills that had
been dubbed Jane Russell in honor of the well-endowed American actress. A
less prominent ridge, named Sandy, sloped down to the east. About 1,000
yards across the valley from Sandy stood Sniper Ridge, which, because
of its strategic location relative to Triangle, also was an objective of
Operation Showdown.
On Oct. 8, Far East Commander Gen. Mark Clark
approved the operation. By then Maj. Gen. Wayne Smith, 7th Division
commander, had selected the 31st Infantry to conduct the assault on
Triangle Hill. The attack on Sniper Ridge was assigned by the Corps
commander to elements of the South Korean 2nd Division.
`Shower of Grenades'
Operation
Showdown began on Oct. 14. Although the original plans called for a
single battalion attack on Triangle Hill, the objective was too large
and too well-defended for such a limited force. So Moses ordered his 3rd
Battalion to take the west sector of the objective, including Hill 598
and Pike's Peak. The east sector of the complex, including Jane Russell
and Sandy Ridge, became the objective of the 1st Battalion.
In
spite of two days of preparatory air strikes and artillery barrages, the
two assault companies on Hill 598, L and K, met fierce resistance from
the Chinese as they made their way up the hill's steep south slope.
Small groups from the attacking force repeatedly assaulted the crest of
the hill, each time being repulsed by "a shower of hand grenades, shape
charges, bangalore torpedos and rocks."
Within the first half
hour, all of L Company's officers became casualties. After two hours,
with both assault companies still bogged down, I Company was committed
to the battle.
Taking advantage of earlier gains by the 1st
Battalion, I Company attacked the hill from the east through Sandy
Ridge. L and K companies, pinned down throughout the day, were finally
ordered to withdraw. I Company held into the evening, but faced with
repeated counterattacks, also abandoned the assault.
In the 1st
Battalion sector, A Company led the attack on Sandy Ridge and Jane
Russell. Pinned down almost immediately by small arms fire from Hill
598, the platoon on Sandy sustained 25 casualties in the first few
minutes. When the remainder of the company was also stopped short of
their objective, B Company was sent into battle.
Sandy Ridge was
finally taken and consolidated, but the attack on Jane Russell remained
bogged down. C Company was then pitched into the maelstrom. After three
hours of combat against intense resistance, "the crest of Objective `B'
(Jane Russell) was in friendly hands."
On that crest, 1st Lt.
Edward R. Schowalter performed feats Hollywood could not duplicate. He
led platoons of A Co., 1st Bn., 31st Inf., up Jane Russell Hill. "Right
through the hail of grenades and small-arms fire he led us," recalled
one GI.
Nearly killed twice, he at one point found himself stacked
among dead Chinese. Severely wounded, he spent six months in the
hospital recuperating. Modesty was Schowalter's hallmark.
"I
always figured I was awarded the medal as the representative, of a
superb fighting team," he said. "We took that hill together. I wear the
Medal of Honor on behalf of all the men who fought and died on that
hill. It's really theirs."
Repeated enemy counterattacks, however,
finally forced the 1st Battalion to abandon its positions, and by the
end of the day, the enemy remained in control of all 31st Infantry
objectives.
from page 1. Previous | Next
Unit's Deadliest Day
In
terms of casualties, it had been the most costly day for the regiment
in all of its more than two years of action in the war: 96 KIA and 337
WIA. It could have been a lot worse. For the first time in the history
of modern warfare, every combatant in the assault force was wearing an
armored vest.
The following day, the 1st Battalion of the 32nd
Infantry, placed under the command of Moses, assaulted Sandy Ridge and
Jane Russell, while the 2nd Battalion of the 31st attacked Hill 598. E
Co., 31st Inf., reached the trenches on 598 and, reinforced by F and G
companies, secured the position. Strong resistance, though, continued
from the enemy on Pike's Peak.
Pfc.
Ralph E. Pomeroy, a member of E Company, manned a machine gun at the
end of a trench to protect his platoon's flank. When the enemy attacked,
he kept up heavy return fire, killing many of them and slowing the
assault.
Shortly after, he was severely wounded from a mortar
burst, and his gun mount rendered inoperable. Still, he removed the gun
and aggressively moved forward. After suffering a second wound and with
his ammunition depleted, Pomeroy took on the enemy in hand-to-hand
combat--using his weapon as a club--until he was killed.
Pomeroy earned the Medal of Honor.
On
the northeast arm of the complex, A and B companies of the 32nd
Infantry were unsuccessful on Jane Russell and had to withdraw to Sandy,
where C Company had established a foothold. At that time, Moses ordered
I Co., 31st Inf., into the battle. No units, however, were able to do
more than consolidate positions on Sandy.
Early on the 16th, Smith
transferred command of the operation to Col. Joseph Russ, commanding
officer of the 32nd Infantry, and the two idle battalions of the 31st
were ordered to replace the 17th Infantry in the west sector of the
division's front. The 2nd Battalion of the 17th was placed under the
command of Russ and secured Jane Russell Hill that afternoon.
Attack
and counterattack continued for the next eight days as Russ continued
to rotate units into the battle. Then, on Oct. 25, the Republic of Korea
(ROK) 2nd Division relieved the 7th Division on Triangle and, after 12
days, U.S. involvement in Operation Showdown ended.
The best available U.S. casualty estimate for Operation Showdown is 1,540: 365 KIA, 1,174 WIA and 1 captured.
A
week later, the ROK division that was struggling to hold Triangle, even
as it continued its battle for Sniper Ridge, was finally forced to
abandon the hill.
An objective planned to be secured by two
battalions in five days had required an entire division. And it was only
partially occupied after 12 days and could not ultimately be defended.
For the remainder of the war, the battle lines around Triangle Hill
remained essentially where they were before Operation Showdown was
conceived.
RICHARD ECKER is a 7th Infantry Division veteran of Triangle Hill and author of Friendly Fire (Omega Communications, 1996).
COPYRIGHT 2002 Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learn
My uncle was:
LUCAS MARSHALL R Rank=PFC Serial Number=US53080856 Branch=Infantry
Military Occupation Specialty=01745 Year of Birth=30 Race=Caucasian
State of Residence=VA County of Residence=Hanover
Unit=31st Inf Regt Division=7th Inf Div Type of Unit=Inf Regt
Place of Casualty=North Korea Date of Casualty (yymmdd)=52 10 30
Type of Casualty=Killed in Action
Detail of Casualty=
Group of Casualty=Killed in Action
The deadliest day. Oct 30th.
And
that's about enough information to send my Mom into greater waves of
memories' pain, but also the other evening when sharing this with my
son, she was generally talking about the real cost of war. Trying to
make the insanity of this absolutely clear. She could tell about the
differences in these two wars she knew pretty well, her 21st husband
serving in WW2.
Mom who herself served, who married a serviceman,
who gave America the ultimate sacrifice brought to my son her thoughts
on Vietnam, on Korea, on Iraq. Mostly Mom asks questions. One of her
questions involves those who do not know this cost firsthand as often
willing to commit others to pay it. But......her exact words were
"You can't understand until you've lived this."
And
my son, who has dedicated months to holding her pain, struggling to get
in his assignments, sat through her talk I suppose more sure than ever
we are a place, nation, worth risking a life to continue having.I felt
perhaps this differently too. But I don't know because he's a pretty
wordless boy, a force of nature, a kid sans language that did not really
speak until 4. The year he went to school, that year he started
talking.
Luca has been willing to look at the injuries and pain we
hold as a family. Quietly. To absorb it, to try sincerely to bring it
his heart, energy, and sincerity.
When I became so ill
with gastric bleeds, with the undetected cancer as the tests, the
pain,and the awful struggles through it all drug on and on.... he'd just
sit with me. He was cheering, he was accepting; he seemed so free of
judging, so open to interpreting your pain as something he sees with
compassion and care. In this way we have to say he has been since his
birth just the best thing that has happened both to Ma and to me. Our
sweetheart.
Yes, I could check the grade checker, sure,
thanks, but I'd like to tell his story of these last few months to a
child's teacher. One that might better know him,
to understand him.
Just as I might want Marshall in his 19 short years to know he will be
remembered.I wish I knew his thoughts. He was ever missed and recalled
for his humor and warmth, for being a good person, his passing in war
the ultimate tragedy. By a sister and her kids. A sister that loved him.
This sweet little book.
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