This commentary is by Dan Barkhuff. He is an ER physician at the University of Vermont Medical Center, a former Navy SEAL and the founder of Veterans For Responsible Leadership.
On Memorial Day I reflect on two deaths from the 9/11 wars, and what, from the comfort of my home, as the chirping of the spring birds greets the dawn, I owe them. One was a Marine I only knew for an hour or so, and the other was a close friend of years and deployments.
The Marine died because he took a few seconds to push his men off of a rooftop first and didn’t jump down the stairwell to safety when he could have. He waited his turn, which as a leader, was to go last.
A bullet hit him in the back, just above the plate in his body armor, traveled through his chest, and exited the front. When I removed his body armor, the ugly little piece of metal fell into the hands of another Marine helping me work on him.
We tried the best we could, with what we had, but he died quickly and silently, in the shadows of a rooftop staircase in Iraq. He was from Georgia, and he is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
My close friend died as a member of a special mission unit. At the time, the terrorist network run by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who commanded al-Qaida in Iraq, was strapping bombs on special needs children and adults and walking them into crowded marketplaces, and a raid targeting those jihadists resulted in his death.
My friend and another SEAL were clearing a room that held a hidden bunker and a machine gun, awaiting their entry. Both men were killed instantly. I learned of his death from a mutual friend on a snowy day in northern Vermont, working as a lab technician while I applied to medical school. My friend was from New Hampshire and is also buried in Arlington.
Both of these men are with me now and will always be. Their sacrifice, of all they were and would ever be, took away from them all the fruits of our nation that I have enjoyed. T-ball games on warm spring days, hot cocoa fireside in a snowstorm, love, community and family were all sacrificed in dank little buildings in Iraq.
Making sense of their deaths, for me, was only possible if I viewed their sacrifice as a gift. It makes sense that my friend gave his life for me. It made sense that the young Marine gave his life, quite literally, in my stead.
Or at least that’s how I try to see it.
And while I can never repay what these men gave me, I can try to earn it by accepting the Sisyphean task of living a “good life.” Their gift was not free of obligation, or duty, and while it can never be repaid, it can be earned.
As I think through the meaning of Memorial Day, to honor all those who lost their lives in defense of America, I wonder what would these two men who live inside me feel about our democracy today?
Might they agree with me that our nation in November faces the most consequential election of our lifetimes, and that the future of our democracy, alongside our legacy as generational guardians of this national inheritance, is at stake? The peaceful transfer of power is at stake. Familial hegemony and staggering corruption in our leadership is at stake.
What might their expressions be if I could speak to them again and explain that America will have a divisive leader it cannot shake, a master of resentment who poses the greatest threat to the nation since Lee marched into Pennsylvania near Gettysburg.
Often those who go to war say with their actions what they do not say with their words. In the case of these two, they never said to me —- if I happen to die you must carry on as a robust participant in our democracy. Dan, you must keep grounded in truth, duty and the belief that service is a privilege.
They never said that I, my family, neighbors and friends owe them moral courage. That we all should speak truth, not only when it feels difficult, but especially when it is hard, when it is not in our interest and when it makes us reevaluate prior loyalties.
We owe this from our dinner table to the Oval Office, and this debt can never be paid off. But the interest accrued must be paid according to the irregular amortization schedule of the life of our Republic until we join them on the other side.
We have a duty to the men and women who never came home. It is time to start paying what we owe.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Dan Barkhuff: What we owe to those who never came home.