By DAVID EPPS
Pastor

After 25 years, I returned to Parris Island, S.C. a few years ago. I was reveling in the homecoming, visiting the place where I became a Marine and a man.

I traveled to the rifle range, where I fired an M-14 rifle for the first time and earned an expert's badge, and visited the confidence course where I still wondered how I ever lived through that experience. I looked for the fan-cooled barracks (the old wooden “barns”) where I lived and trained, to discover they had been replaced by air-conditioned brick and concrete structures.

I drove by the physical training fields, the pugil stick grounds, the parade deck, and other places of terror, torture and growth. I visited the Marine Museum, after a youthful sergeant informed me that my “era” (Vietnam) was now in a museum, and drank deeply of the tradition, the honor, and the history. I left the museum feeling as cocky and bold as I did when I was 19 and a slick-sleeved private.

As I stepped out of the museum and into the sunshine, I strolled along the sidewalk and, in the distance, spied a contingent of men headed my way. They seemed strangely out of place in this domain of the strong and courageous. These men were old, gray, and wrinkled. Some were balding, all walked slowly, with two using canes and one managing to get along only with the aid of a walker.

I assumed that they were grandparents coming to watch their young Marine graduate from boot camp (now called “Basic Warrior Training,” in the new Marine Corps), later in the morning. Most wore glasses and all sported a yellow baseball cap.

As they approached, I realized how terribly wrong my assessment of these men really was. For on each yellow baseball cap was emblazoned these words: “Guadalcanal Reunion-USMC.” I froze in my tracks as these old men approached, oblivious to my presence. A lump rose in my throat as I realized that these very men ... the ones headed my way ... were among those I had studied about in Marine history classes.

I had watched these very men, or men like them, in the black and white documentaries on the History Channel. I had watched from the advantages of time, safety and distance as the film footage on the television told the story of the agony, terror, fear, mutilation, death and unbridled bravery that won the day on Guadalcanal. The old men coming my way weren't just grandfathers passing the time.

These men, my God, were Marines. They were the Marines that built the tradition and heritage that makes up the mystique and grandeur of the Marine Corps. These weren't just old Marines ... they were Guadalcanal Marines.

I wanted to say something to them as they passed, but the words stuck in my throat. I wanted to thank them for their sacrifice, their example, their courage ... but I fell silent instead. I wanted to salute them and speak words of honor and appreciation but, in the end, I simply stepped off the sidewalk and let them pass undisturbed.

Heroes passed by me in moments all too brief on that day and something unexplainable changed in me forever. I had seen greatness in the old men on the sidewalk. I could only walk away as the hot tears spilled down my cheeks. I was free because of these men and millions like them.

Last Memorial Day, I experienced those emotions all over again, only this time, I was staring into the faces of hundreds of quiet heroes. The Memorial Day service in Peachtree City was impressive and moving. A formerly active Marine (don't ever tell a Marine that he's an ex-Marine), Randy Gaddo, worked for months to honor America's fallen and put together a powerful gathering. He honored me by asking me to serve as the master of ceremonies for the event.

A genuine hero, General Raymond Davis, USMC, former assistant commandant of the Marine Corps and winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and dozens of other awards, spoke to the gathering at the fountain in City Hall Plaza.

Middle school students read touching essays, a musical group sang songs that brought both applause and tears, the Veterans of Foreign Wars lead prayers and placed a wreath at the foot of a memorial, and there were speeches, drums, bagpipes, flags and more. But that's not what moved me.

Somewhere during the ceremony, I looked up from the podium and looked into the faces of hundreds of heroes just like those that passed me by on the sidewalk that day at Parris Island. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, coast guardsmen were in abundance, most proudly sporting ball caps, or T-shirts that identified them as veterans.

Some were World War II veterans remembering battles and friends from long ago. Others had seen action in the frozen hell of Korea where they had lost comrades in pitched battles with North Koreans and Chinese communists. A large number were veterans of Vietnam where they fought and bled and honorably served in a war made unwinnable by dishonorable politicians.

Some were young, at least to me, but stood proudly as those who had defeated the fourth largest army in the world and liberated Kuwait in the Gulf War. I looked up from the podium and 300 heroes, and their families, looked back at me. Once again, greatness stared me in the face.

At the beginning of the ceremony, a strong wind blew in and knocked over the American flag and the flag of the VFW. An audible gasp escaped the throats of several near the podium as the red, white and blue banner, pushed by the wind, hit the ground. Two veterans of long-ago wars, leapt from the seats, picked up the fallen flags, and, throughout the morning, stood by the flags making sure they didn't fall again.

That is what makes all these men and women, of all these various conflicts, American heroes. In their generation, when the flag threatened to fall, they left their homes, families, and country and did their duty. They stood by the flag and, because of them, that flag still waves proudly over a free people.

I still have the lump in the throat and the tears on the cheeks ... but this time, I just couldn't bear to remain silent.

[David Epps is rector of Christ the King Church in Peachtree City. He may be contacted at FatherDavidEpps@aol.com or at www.ChristTheKingCEC.com].

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