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The happy faces of Mary and Ed boarding the Queen Victoria for a trip through the Panama Canal and then to Florida.  Sixteen Days of comfort and excess.  Bob McElroy will be glad to know that this trip through Panama did not include any AC130s.  Mary walked in the jungle in Costa Rica, but my wheels are not working well so I shuffled around the port.  Canal looks a lot more prosperous than I was last there for the Great Noriega Hunt.  Mary scored some antiques and jewelry in Aruba and .Grand Caymans.  We went to Virginia from Florida for a visit with Meredith, Matt and Kids..  Great Time, as usual by the time we started for home I was coming down with some virus.  Ended up being two viruses.

This put the hookup we planned with Cris and Sue Sullivan in Genoa NV for the Cowboy Poetry Festival in the toilet.  Mary caught my stuff and is still sick, but things are moving up.  Tomorrow NPS is giving me a retirement send off.  Bottom Line, we are on the mend with a few dips.

I have appended below a Memorial Day piece that will explain to some my past and future.  I figured it was time before I run out of time.

Semper Fi

Ed

Memorial Day

Khe Sahn combat base , Viet Nam spring of 1967.  I stink, my fighting hole stinks, the red dirt sticks  to me like paint, and my pillow is one of the thousand sand bags we have filled.  It's getting dark so it's time to put out the claymores.  We just hope the mist does not set in and take away all our visibility leaving just the sound of our wire rattling.  We are prepared for a visit by the North Vietnamese Army, and the ritual struggle with the rats that will invade our fighting holes in the darkness.  My eyes are still stinging from the heat tab that has warmed my coffee, when I hear "coming in".  The next moment Lt Gatlin Howell is in my sand bagged castle.  Lt Howell is in Bravo Company, 1st Battalion ,9th Marines (B 1/9).  I am not even in his unit, but we are his Marines.  He knows we are ready, but he is doing his head check on us.  Is the listening post out?  Are the left and right limits in?  How are you doing?  He always appears when the shooting starts and he leads from the front and sets the example.  Some how when he leaves, my fighting hole does not stink so bad.  We take some heavy hits, but B 1/9 moves on, and I eventually end up back in the States.  Lt Howell left me with the gold standard for combat leadership.  Lead from the front, no compromise of your honor, courage, commitment, and listen to the voices in the fighting hole. 

 

Sixteen years later, I am on the bridge of the USS Denver in a training exercise in  Hawaii.   It is a warm dark evening, and we are discussing Viet Nam.  I present Lt Gatlin Howell as my gold standard for combat leadership.  That is when I find out that my commander, Col "Mac" Ratcliff, was with Lt Howell when he was killed at Con Thien.  At that moment Lt Howell became more than my example.  He became my burden and my ghost.  So who is this ghost?  Lt Howell was of native American extraction born in Oklahoma, but finished high school in Coloma, California.  He enlisted in the US Marines in 1954-55 for four years, and then took the GI Bill graduating from San Francisco State College. With a teaching credential, he joined the faculty of Pelton Junior High School in San Francisco.  He has a wife and a young son when the Marines land in Viet Nam.  He believes it is his duty to get into the fight.  He is an ancient Lieutenant of 31 years when he deploys to Viet Nam on 9 July 1966.  He will win the Navy Cross and he will die on July 7, 1967.  One month before his rotation date home and four days before his birthday.  Lt Howell is buried at the San Francisco National Cemetery.  He left behind his wife and two sons.  They lost a very special person.  His sons did not get to play catch with him.  They lost a rock to build a family on.  Their sacrifice left us with an almost impossible standard to live up to.

 

A couple of months ago, at a regimental celebration, a Master Sergeant was hugging me and sobbing.  He was thanking me for the leadership he learned in Somalia when I was his commander.  At that moment, I realized he was not hugging me, he was hugging Lt Gatlin Howell.  Veterans around the world search battlefields, monuments, and graveyards for their comrades that lost limbs, lives, and souls in the service of their nation.  They are searching for an answer. Is the life that I got to live worthy of those who lost theirs?  This Memorial Day,  I will make my walk to tell Lt Howell that the flame he lit in me still flickers in the Marines that he has touched through me.  This will close a circle. This Memorial Day, we should all stop in awe of their sacrifice. 

Colonel Edward John  Lesnowicz Jr.  USMC (ret)