Saturday, December 16, 2006
LAST MAN TO DIE
"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" queried a decorated, young, former navy lieutenant with several Purple Hearts of the Congress in 1971 about the Viet Nam War. Although John Kerry was much maligned by his political enemies for his role in leading protests to a war in which he had fought, the question remains a poignant one. It is particularly relevant to our own era.
The thought of being the last soldier to die in any war is a tough one to put one's mind around. It would be even more difficult to fathom the wantonly lost feeling in contemplating the last one to die unnecessarily or without good cause.
The Militant Moderate has been sufficiently disturbed by these thoughts to be motivated to see what might be readily available on the internet about those soldiers who had been the last to die in some of our wars. It became even more disturbing to find that these last men to die were so obscure as to be beyond easy reach or identification. An irony of the search was that certain of these names were found only on trivia sites. How sad!
George Pike, a Canadian, was said to be the last to die in the combat lines on November 12, a day after the effective date of the Armistice ending World War I. However, there were numerous casualties of many nationalities on the day of the Armistice. It was said that vigorous artillery barrages, much heavier than usual, were exchanged on the morning in an apparent effort to inflict as much harm as possible before the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month when the Armistice would go into effect.
Charles McMahon, age 21, of Massachusetts and Darwin Lee Judge, age 19, of Iowa, were the last ones to die in Viet Nam, at the Saigon airport guarding the departure there in 1975. So, these two young men were the last to die in that mistaken war about which Kerry inquired of Congress four long years earlier. Their bodies were left behind.
Some say that Abraham Lincoln was the last to die in America's Civil War that killed 600,000. However, the last young soldier to die in combat was John Williams from Indiana, who died one month after the surrender at Appomatox in a skirmish at Palmito Ranch in Texas. He was the only casualty of that last battle.
Certainly, it is a sad, discomforting thought to think of the young men who have been the last to die in our wars. However, in another sense, the last to die are no more significant than the first, and the first are no more significant than those between themselves and the last. Deaths in war are a sad thing. This writer has experienced death in war within his own family. It is a heart wrenching experience that lasts forever.
But it is even more tragic to be either the last, or in any position, among those who die in a mistaken cause or following mistaken orders. Who can forget the gallantry of the Light Brigade, memorialized in the epic poem set in the Crimean War? Or, who can forget the tragic and wasteful error of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg?
Let us not leave our young Americans to die in Iraq as a continuation of a mistake! More than 1,000 will die there between now and the beginning of 2008, the earliest timeline for departure from Iraq. Can we not save these?
We would wish that the last to die there came yesterday.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
