Memorial Day

The first Memorial Day parade I remember was in Dedham, MA, probably around 1938 or 1939, when I was 4 or 5. There were the doughboys with their flat dishpan helmets, Springfield rifles and puttees, and the marching band from Dedham High School, but most of all I remember the open car going slowly by, with a frail old man in the back, wearing a Civil War uniform, and gently waving a transparent, bony hand at the crowd — the last local survivor of the Grand Army of the Republic. 

And I remember my own active duty Army service (1954-1961 — a rare period when Americans were not at war somewhere), which began with my feeling that my personal qualities were being recognized at last in a way I had never felt before, either in my family or in school, and ended much too long after I had recognized that as an Infantry officer my job was to lead men to kill one another up close and personal. 

Those memories came back when I was a selectman in Manchester, MA (1986-91), and each year marched at the head of a parade through town, stopping at each cemetery in town, ending at one where each year the same rituals were performed: a high school student (who might soon die in Iraq or Afghanistan, but didn’t know it yet) reciting the Gettysburg address, a gray-haired former Army nurse from the American Legion Auxiliary reciting the maudlin “In Flanders’ Fields,” someone else reading a war-glorifying “Reply to ‘In Flanders’ Fields’,” a bugle blowing taps, and a ragged volley fired in salute by a squad of portly legionnaires who the other 364 days of the year were recognizably the Fire Chief, a grocery clerk, a plumber and a policeman. Then we all went to the harbor where the Auxiliary Legionnaire threw a bunch of poppies into the water (if it was low tide they lay in the mud until the tide came in). There were no GAR veterans or World War I doughboys, but a handful of WW II and Korean War veterans, and few more from the Vietnam War. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “so it goes.” But Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, right?

A few days ago I read an obituary of Paul Fussell, Jr.,  a clear-thinking military historian whose work I admire. He too had recalled how much he had enjoyed the infantry (he was a lieutenant in combat in France just after D-Day), until he became aware that the purpose of the infantry was to persuade young men like him to kill as many other young men like him as possible. He went on to write The Great War and Modern Memory and many other books and articles that I wish many politicians would read before they send young men and women off to yet another war.

Love and long life to all. Maybe even a few years of peace.

ABOUT "BEAM REACH"

“Beam reach” is a sailor’s term: when the wind is blowing more or less at right angles to the course he wants to sail (the wind is not coming from ahead, or astern, but abeam), the helmsman trims his sheets to catch the breeze so his boat will move forward efficiently and speedily.  If the wind is blowing from the right direction, it will take him home. If not, at least it will take him somewhere fast.

He is not beating to windward, with the breeze almost on his nose, the hull banging into each oncoming wave and the salt spray flying back in his face; nor is he running free, with the wind astern, pressing the boat forward, surfing up the back of each wave and down its other side, the sails flapping when he’s in a trough and bellying out when on the crest of the next sea, the hull rolling and pitching, and the mains’l threatening to jibe (to sweep unexpectedly across the cockpit, only knocking off his hat if he’s lucky) if he bears off the wind a bit too far. Between beating and running comes reaching; when the wind is abeam, you're on a beam reach.

Beating is exhilarating but wearing, both to boat and skipper, while running free before the wind is also taxing, and not the most efficient way to make the boat move fast through the water.

But a beam reach takes full advantage of the shape of the hull and keel as well as the cut and set of the sails.  All combine to use the force of the wind and the motion of the hull through the water to maximize speed. A well designed boat, carrying the right amount of sail for the prevailing wind, will move through the water quickly, steadily and comfortably.

On a beam reach the sailor has a sense that he’s in control. He can sit back and take satisfaction with the way his vessel is performing, and perhaps at the way his acquired skills have helped it to perform well.  And he has the feeling he’s getting somewhere. As my wife Joy says, “It’s the sweet spot of sailing.”

OK, you can see the metaphor coming: this blog will be a place for me to sit back in the cockpit, keeping an eye on the set of the sails and the state of the weather, and to reminisce about the high (and not so high) points of a lifetime that is approaching 80, to comment on events, from the state of the world to the state of our back yard, and to share some of my past writings and drawings, and maybe a poem or two.

I have been working off and on for more than a decade on a memoir, focusing on my life in Washington and beyond, where I spent a career working on arms control and disarmament. Its tentative title is A Footsoldier of the Cold War.  I might try out some of it on my blog readers from time to time in the course of writing. 

I also have a couple of other books on a very back burner, if there is such a thing, and will share some of those works in (fitful) progress with you too. One is a biography of an ancestor who fought in the War of 1812, went on to run several textile mills (in one of them he had the dubious distinction of inspiring the first women’s labor walkout in America) and managed one of America’s first railroads until his accidental death at the age of 42 (when they heard the news, the mill girls all cheered). Another is a sort of illustrated logbook – or annotated set of drawings – from thirty years of cruising the coast of Maine with my friend Richard Dudman.

I don’t plan to make an entry every day, or even every week. In other words, this is likely to be as irregular a production as most of the other blogs you follow.  But for now, it’s time to hoist the sails, cast off the mooring, and see where the wind will take me.