Winter - 70th Infantry Division Association

THE HOMILY
He ought to be sitting right next to you this
morning. He should have shared a beer with you
in the hospitality room and sat at your banquet
table last night.
He should have greeted you in the lobby Thursday,
his face alight with the happiness of seeing
you after these many years.
He should have shown you pictures of his
grandchildren and told you of his plans for retirement.
But he didn't. He wasn't here.
No, he wasn't here.
His body lies in the graveyard of some small
town in Pennsylvania or Nebraska or Oregon,
where children mark those graves with little
American flags on Memorial Day. Or perhaps he
lies under one of those thousands of white stones
in the military cemetery of St. A vold, France.
For he was one of the 755 Trailblazers who
were killed in action.
If he could be with us today, he would have
few memories of common experiences to share
with us. For his life was too short to amass many
memories. Typically, he went directly from high
school to the service. Certainly, it was in his very
young manhood. He had no career yet, no wife,
no children. He was a Depression kid and among
his few memories must have been many an unhappy
one.
Surely, the most vivid of his memories would
be of those dense forests of the Vosges Mountains,
the deadly hills of the Saarland and the
menacing streets of Philippsbourg and Forbach.
For whether that German lead caught him in the
opening hours of Nord wind, in Baerenthal or at
the underpass at Wingen, or whether he was the
last fatality on a combat patrol before Saarbrucken,
those 89 days seared memories into the heart.
In the 50 years since last we saw him, we,
gathered together here this morning, have lived
1992
lives laden with memories. We have memories of
weddings and honeymoons, of babies and grandchildren,
of jobs and careers and hobbies and
vacations. And we have memories of sickness
and pain and sorrows, of worries over finances
and drugs and dangers in our streets. We have
memories of divorces and estrangements and
collapsed dreams. We have so many memories.
For, during those 50 years while he lay dead,
we lived.
Yes, we lived.
But then, he, too, lived. He lives in our hearts.
For it would take more than a half century to erase
those bonds that solder together a band of brothers
who stood shoulder to shoulder in mortal
combat.
We have inscribed his name- and those of his
fallen comrades - in our Book of Remembrance
that is the center of our ceremony this morning.
That is good. For the Old Testament instructs us
to "raise up their names in honor."
We do not really need to write those names on
the paper of a book. For they are incised in our
hearts, our minds and our very being. And there
they shall remain, gleaming and untarnished,
until that morning when we shall rejoin them,
and, with them for the first time stand Reveille in
our great hereafter.
Fallen brothers, we remember you.
16
70th Division Assn. TRAILBLAZER