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By Brooks A. Mick, M.D.
Oct. 23, 2006 That was what a sweet old fellow said today when I was making rounds in the hospital. I asked him how he was feeling. “Doc, I’ll be 96 years old in a couple months, if I make it, and I was in really good health most of that time, but now old age has caught up with me.” I chatted a while, nothing really specific was bothering him, but I promised to do what we could to make him better. I think he and I both know that the only thing that would make him better now is a time machine to turn back the clock 20 years. But he had had a good life, done a lot of things, and wasn’t too reluctant to go when it was his time. Which he realized might be sooner than later. A few days ago I was riding through the Yorktown Battlefield on my bike and, as I always did, I stopped at the white cross of the “French cemetery” where, it is thought, about 50 Frenchmen, far from home and in a rather primitive, to them, land, had died while fighting to liberate the colonists from Great Britain’s shackles. Two pickup trucks were parked in the little turn-around, and four people were there, two men, white-haired, stoop-shouldered, and slow-moving, though still able to drive their pickup trucks, and two women, apparently their wives. One of the women had taken her camera close to the white cross and was photographing it. As I always do when I pass that spot, I came to attention and saluted the brave Frenchmen who had died for the idea of America and freedom. At that time, the photographer turned around and began walking back to the trucks. She noticed my salute and pointed to me and the old men turned slowly around. Then a strange thing happened. Both of them turned back to the white cross marking the grave of the unknown Frenchmen, and they too saluted. I suspect that those old, creaky, white-haired, stooped gentlemen were likely soldiers from the Korean war. Possibly even some of the last of the WW2 soldiers. I hopped back on my bike and threw them a salute as I pedaled off, and they saluted back. Until that particular moment a few days ago, I had always stopped and saluted alone, no one to witness other than the occasional owl or squirrel. It’s not that I think the long-dead French soldiers see me stopping to salute them. The act of saluting is not really for them, though it is in their memory. The saluting is an action I take for me, myself. It is done to recognize that there have been many, many soldiers who have died in the fight for freedom of this great country, this USA, this America. Such brave acts began before the USA was born, on the fields of Yorktown, and they continue today in the deserts of the Middle East. The American Revolution, the insurrection of the North American colonials, went badly for many years. Many battles and many lives were lost. The colonists, those who chose to fight under the leadership of George Washington, changed their tactics many times until they struck the right balance and had the bit of luck needed to defeat the British, the greatest military power in the world at that time. But they persevered. They persevered. My battlefield salute is to remind me of those men to whom we owe everything that has proceeded from that courageous undertaking. Tomorrow, if the old gentleman has not passed on, I should remind myself to ask him about his military experience. I’ll bet 50 bucks he was a soldier at some time in his life. I should thank him for his service. Some day old age will catch up to me, too. ------------ About the author Brooks A. Mick: Physician, still practicing medicine but retired from the US Army. Write just for the fun of it, but working on novel in the vein of Tom Clancy's politico-military genre. Email: brooks15@cox.net Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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