Memorial Day

Memorial Day is a day for remembrance, and for me, it is a day to remember those who have served, and are serving and those who have fallen.  In particular, I always remember a guy with whom I went to college in 1964 - 1965, David H. Warner.

Dave was a roommate of a high school classmate, and that is how I met him.  We played cards together, and drank beer together, and hunted together, and hung out together.  The first time I got drunk at college, Dave was there.  He was probably with me the last time I got drunk there as well.  Dave was smart as a whip.  He and Lanny Rudolph would often team up to make sure I lost at Hearts, Pinochle, and Bridge.   He also had a sense of humor that matched mine, and practical jokes were played on each other (as well as Lanny and Ray Gallant, another high school classmate).

I didn't do well in college that first year.  I started when I was 17, and I was immature.  Lacking self-discipline, I quickly made my way onto academic probation.  By spring, I knew I was flunking out.  In April 1968, healthy males who lost their student deferment popped right to the head of the draft board's list.  That meant it was a certainty I was going to be drafted and ultimately would wind up in Viet Nam.  I read Guadalcanal Diary at a young age and was forever impressed by the courage and persistence of Marines in combat.  That was what I wanted to be.  So I joined the Marines to avoid the draft.  However, that makes me a different kind of draft dodger than Bill Clinton, George W> Bush, and Donny Trump.

On May 8, 1965, I took one step forward, raised my hand , and swore the oath that inducted me into the Armed Forces of the United States.  I did not have to report to San Diego for a month, so I rode the Greyhound Bus back to Ellensburg and Central Washington State College, and partied the rest of the school year away with Dave, Lanny, Ray, and others long forgotten. Dave and Lanny and Ray rode me like a rented mule, deriding my decision to enlist in the Marines.  They teased me and belittled my ability to ever become a Marine.  It was really without mercy, but I'm sure they were doing it in fun, as we had all given each other a hard time about everything from drinking abilities to choice of girlfriends throughout the school year.

At the end of May, I flunked out.  In June, I went to boot camp.  In July, I received my draft notice.  In September, I graduated from boot camp and went to Infantry training.  BY October I received my MOS designation as a field radio operator.  The following year I attended and graduated from a Vietnamese language course.  In October 1966, I landed in Viet Nam.

I lost touch with Dave, Lanny, and Ray.  Lanny became a stoner, at least for awhile (the last time I saw him in 1974 he was so high he could barely stand on his own).  I know Ray went into the Air Force, but I don't know anything else after that.  The next time I heard anything about Dave was on my flight back from Viet Nam to San Francisco in 1968.  On that flight, I met a guy, and somehow Dave Warner's name came up.  The guy said he knew Dave, and Dave had been killed in action in the Tet Offensive earlier that year.  That sobered me up to the point that I forgot that a flight attendant had given me her phone number.

Time passed, and eventually, Al Gore invented the internet, and the Viet Nam War memorial was built, and Larry and Sergey built The Google and finding friends, whether living or dead, became a matter of a few keystrokes.  I answered the question that had been bugging me for years: Was Dave really killed in Viet Nam?

Dave is on the Wall.  I have visited his name there twice.  I have visited his memorial on the Virtual Wall.  You can visit it here.  I urge you to read through that memorial.  It isn't long.  It is a memorial to a life ended by Dave Warner's own sense of duty to others.

Dave was full of life, a life he lost in true service to his country.  It is meet and right to honor men and women who have given their life for their country through dedication to the fundamental ideals set forth in the Constitution.  Whether the Viet Nam War was a just war will be debated long after I am dead and gone, but the men and women who served there, and those who died there in service, did so out of their sense of duty to others.

So if you don't have anyone special to remember who gave up their life in service to our country, I urge you to remember Dave Warner.  He was young, he was smart, he was funny, he was dedicated to service to all of us.  I remember him often.  And I do so with guilt.  I made it home, Dave did not. And that will always bother me.