A Day at the Beach: A Memorial Day story

High up on the hillside, an elderly man in a wheelchair rolled onto his porch.  He looked down at where the Pacific Ocean taunted the land.  It was another beautiful day at LaJolla Shores Beach. The thin strip of sand was teeming with holiday revelers.  He could hear their laughter and cheers mixed in with a constant drumbeat of the aqua blue waves crashing.  On the horizon, the marine layer (a thick bank of clouds), hovered just off shore. The elderly man closed his eyes for a minute and opened them.  Out of the marine layer, hundreds of Higgins Boats appeared, chugging slowly toward the beachhead.  Explosions began to surround the boats, occasionally picking one off.  He suddenly was in one of the boats, feeling the old fear again and smelling the vomit and diesel.  Bullets whizzed over his head and when the landing platform dropped, all Hell broke loose.  Smitty, his best friend from basic training, evaporated into a red mist of meat and blood.  His sergeant lost his head.  He jumped into the too deep water to escape the hail of lead and struggled not to drown.  The beach turned red and the teeming people he had seen before became a sea of corpses.

The man  closed his eyes again.  He opened them and rolled himself back into the house.  Even after nearly 70 years, the memory was too much.

He knew the true meaning of Memorial Day.

A few hundred yards below him was an attractive 40-year-old brunette. She was playing Frisbee with her 15-year-old son in a park across the street from the beach.  As she leapt high to catch the flying disc, smoke from a nearby grill tickled her nose.  She smelled the cooking meat and the smoke and closed her eyes.  When she opened them again, she was in Iraq, leaping out of a landing UH-60 Blackhawk.  On its side was painted a red cross. She was on a mercy mission. She was a medic.  Off the the left of the chopper was a burning Humvee. She saw the bodies and ran to assist whoever she could.  The heat was searing.  In the driver’s seat was a young private.  Adrenaline pushed her closer to the flames and she grabbed him, yanking him from out behind the wheel and to safety.  His badly burned mouth was screaming for his mother. And before she could save him, his expression went blank.  She would never forget his face for the rest of her life.

She opened her eyes, looked at the burn scars on her arm and hugged her son.

She knew the true meaning of Memorial Day.

Forty yards away from the former medic was a balding grandfather on a boogie board. He was playing with his young granddaughter in the surf when a bright orange Coast Guard helicopter roared over the white sandy beach.  The grandfather stopped, touched the bottom of the seabed and allowed the waves to crash over him. He closed his eyes and when he reopened them, he was on a UH-1 Huey gunship, firing his machine gun into the perimeter of the landing zone. The Viet Cong was riddling the chopper and the people on it with bullets.  Smoke poured from the hit engine but he kept firing.  The co-pilot was dead and the pilot fought with all his might to get the Marines out of the area.  He felt the searing pain of the bullet that ended up taking his right arm.

He opened his eyes again and smiled at his beloved granddaughter.

He knew the true meaning of Memorial Day.

Down the Coast a few miles from the grandfather is Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery. Perched high on Point Loma, it overlooks the entrance to San Diego Harbor.  A small group of people were gathered around a grave that looked just like the hundreds surrounding it.  A lone bugler played taps as the color guard fired their rifles into the air.  A fighter flew over the gravesite and a young widow watched as her Navy SEAL husband’s coffin was lowered into the cold earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

The marine layer finally approached the shore, shrouding the land in a cold, damp fog.  A single tear trickled down her face. As the Navy Captain handed her the flag, she opened her eyes.

She, too, knew the true meaning of Memorial Day.