I have tried on many occasions on this blog to detail the trials of the many thousands of Philippine veterans. I have spilled thousands of words onto this medium in an effort to give a sense to those unfamiliar with the conflict, the human drama endured by our forces.
If there is anything to be learned by you and by me, it is that words can only narrate suffering. Words have not the power to reach or describe the psychological intensity or the horror stained on the retinas of those who witnessed such horrible atrocities, and adjectives do not exist to describe them.
As hard as I have tried, I have learned that only by experiencing what our men endured can one understand the nature of their being, and that will not happen. These men understand each other and as they sit on panels at conventions attempting to convey their experiences to us, they also fail.
These men are in a realm of their own. They can no more describe their ordeal than they can describe Heaven. Poets come close but they miss the mark as well. Battles can be portrayed, suffering can be detailed, torture can be recounted, deaths can be illustrated, fear expressed and the gamut of emotions outlined, but nothing in our existence ties them all together. We become word scientists looking for a unified theory of expression. I am not sure that it will ever happen.
All we are capable of is to listen to these men, honor them, hold them close to our hearts and thank them every chance we have for what they have given us. We have need to thank God for giving us such men when we most needed them and thank them for the freedom to choose our God.
Robert Hudson 5/31/2010
This blog honors all soldiers who fought the Japanese in the Philippines during World War Two. It can be a research tool for you and gives me the opportunity to honor my father who fought on Bataan. God Bless our soldiers then, now and in the future.
I found this true as well. My father, Gregory "Chief" Diaz (changed his name to Marshall after the war) was often quiet and never told us much about what he went through at Bataan and through the war's end where he was at a camp near Nagasaki. I was blessed enough to meet some of the men who had been through that with him, and happy to know that with them he could share memories that he could not with anyone else. I thank him and the hundreds of thousands who stood up to fight that war.
ReplyDeleteGreg Marshall, Maj (R) USAF