Remembering Unique Views of Americans on Memorial Day

Writers note: This Memorial Day column appeared in the Chesterfield Patch in 2011. While trying to come up with a Memorial Day column for 2012, I finally realized I was not going to be able to do better than this one.    

Too many of us take for granted and have all but forgotten the effect American soldiers, sailors and Marines have had on a generation of people around the world who are now themselves declining in numbers. I have few personal stories that taught me lessons about this in the last 15 years.

A week after September 11, 2001, my wife and I are on a train travelling through central Germany.  After a stop, a well dressed Dutchman, who we later learned was 71-years-old entered our compartment and took a seat. Upon learning that we were Americans he excused himself and left the compartment. 

He returned in 10 minutes and handed us two cold Cokes and an English language newspaper he purchased in the dining car. He then sat down and explained he was 11-years old when the Nazis invaded Holland. For five years his family was forced to live a harsh life and nearly starved before they were liberated in 1945 by paratroopers of the US 101st Airborne. He continued that after forcing the Nazis out of Holland, the Americans left and Canadians soldiers followed providing food and medical care until the end of the war.

The man told us that any time he sees an American or Canadian he tries to repay the debt he and his family owe to the solders by offering something as a gesture of thanks.

American and Canadian soldiers had such an impact on this man that 56 years later he was in some small way trying to repay Americans for his freedom.

Another time on a fall vacation in Europe my wife and I found ourselves in Basel. Switzerland. It was 8:30 on a rainy night and we were trying to read a map to find a restaurant near a river. We were fooling with the map under a streetlight in front of a row of 400 year-old buildings. 

A woman in a sleek Mercedes pulled to the curb and asked if she could help us. The elegant woman with a heavy French accent was in her early 60s. After finding out we were Americans she told us to wait where we were. She drove down a narrow alley next to a building. Five minutes later the door to the building we were in front of opened and she invited us in.

We walked into an amazing house that was built in 1590 and was furnished with what would be considered museum pieces here in the United States. Our hostess told us we couldn’t go to restaurant we were searching for. It wasn’t very good and wouldn’t do. She picked up a phone, made a call and reserved a table for us at another restaurant, where she insisted we go. After giving us directions we thanked her, but she stopped us and said she was still thanking Americans for freeing France.

Finally there is Duck Lee. In 1998 while living outside of Washington, DC I had several jobs. One job was that of a sportswriter covering college sports and minor league baseball. Duck Lee, was a pitching coach for one of the local college baseball teams I covered. Once day I asked about his unusual uniform number of 63. It was his age. He sat down and told why it was important that he put his age on his uniform to remind him of a vow he made as a teenager.

Duck was born in Manchuria, China in a Korean colony that was later occupied by the invading Japanese troops. At the end of the war his family escaped from China traveling at night on a frozen river, eventually reaching Seoul. His father prospered as a government official and Duck dreamed of playing American baseball in high school.  Before his freshman year of high school, North Korean soldiers had overrun Seoul and Duck’s family went into hiding.

After US troops retook Seoul Duck started hanging around a Marine rifle company and for several months using his two-years of grammar school English he acted as an unofficial interrupter for the Marines. He never got to play high school baseball.

“War to many Americans means something that happened far away from America. To me war means something that swept through my town, my school and my home. It killed all sports, not just baseball,” said Lee.

Lee eventually came to the United States for college attending Shippenberg University in Pennsylvania. He tried out for the baseball team but did not make the varsity squad until his senior year as a relief pitcher. He stayed in the United States and retired from Bell Atlantic in 1995.   

After his retirement Duck coached baseball and stayed in contact with some of the Marines who had befriended him during the Korean War,

“I vowed I would not allow the Communists to steal baseball from me and I thank the American soldiers and Marines who allowed me to eventually play and now coach,” said Lee.

Three brief stories tell a bigger tale of what the sacrifices of Americans from 65 and 70 years ago mean to people around the world.