Memorial Day: A Solemn Salute to Those Who Sacrificed for Our Freedom

Memorial Day is a solemn day of remembrance dedicated to honoring and mourning the military personnel who have died in the service of our country. It is a time for all of us to reflect on the sacrifices made by these brave individuals and to show gratitude for their unwavering commitment to protecting our freedoms.

Join Lee Bentch as he speaks with Barbara Kautz, a Vietnam War veteran who served with the 24th Evacuation Hospital at the Long Binh Army Post in 1969. Barbara’s thoughts, concerns, and the impact ongoing death had on her are very poignant and touching.

Memorial Day has become overshadowed by Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial beginning of summer vacation. Lee points out that there is nothing wrong with going to the beach, starting a vacation, or spending time at a picnic or amusement park, as long as Monday, May 27, is reserved for a few minutes of silence, tears, and thoughts for the 700,000 men and women who fought in the many wars that shaped our country and died doing so.

 These are men and women who will Always be Remembered and Never Forgotten. 

Transcript

Ronald Reagan 1986  00:04

Today is the day we put aside to remember fallen heroes, and to pray that no heroes will ever have to die for us again.

Ronald Reagan 1982  00:18

They volunteer to defend values for which men have always been willing to die if need be. The values which make up what we call civilization. As we honor their memory today, let us pledge that their lives, their sacrifices, their valor, shall be justified and remembered for as long as God gives life to this nation.

Lee J. Bentch  00:50

Monday, May 27th 2024. Today they shall be ingrained in the hearts and souls of all Americans and its allies. It is Memorial Day. A day dedicated to remembering and honoring all that have lost their lives in the service of our country. From the battlefields of the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Civil War. To the beaches of the Spanish American War, the Mexican American War and the soldiers lost to the Indian Wars, as America spread westward. 

Let's not forget the trenches of the Western Front in World War I and the Day of Infamy December 7 1941, as America was thrust into World War II with Japan and ultimately Europe. To the hills of Korea, the river deltas of Vietnam, the Marine barracks in Beirut, both wars in Iraq along with the Afghanistan War on Terror and all the other skirmishes, such as Somalia, Bengali and Syria, where American troops have lost their lives. All shall be remembered and never forgotten. 

In its history, America has lost more than 690,000 soldiers. Memorial Day is a day to pay our respects to them. Many died in battle. Others died years later from wounds. These are men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice to ensure our freedoms. Never turning their back on the threats they faced and the deadly challenges encountered. But while Memorial Day is meant to be a solemn day, over the years, it has become confused with Memorial Day weekend. I'm not one to overlook the fun barbecue a few days at a beach house or quick trip. But I restrict those activities to the Saturday and Sunday before Memorial Day. On Memorial Day itself I spend, as a day of remembrance, at a local Veterans Cemetery paying my respects. 

I am Lee Bentch, a multiservice veteran. Welcome to the Crow's Feet: Life as We Age Memorial Day podcast. 

Barbara Kautz is a Crow's Feet writer and author of the book When I Die, I'm Going to Heaven ‘Cause I Spent My Time in Hell: A Memoir of My Year as an Army Nurse in Vietnam. At the height of the Vietnam War after completing her nursing studies on a full army scholarship at the University of Maryland. She was obligated to a three year tour of duty. She spent one year at Letterman Army Medical Center in San Francisco. She later deployed to Vietnam and was stationed at the Long Binh Army post with an assignment at the 24th Evacuation Hospital. In her one year duty in Vietnam, she saw a lot of death on a daily basis. But she also did more to help soldiers recover along with a collection of children and innocent victims caught in the crossfire battle. As a teenager, she knew she wanted to find a way to help her parents avoid a big college tuition debt. 

Barbara Kautz  03:48

And I became convinced that that's what I was going to do was apply for a military scholarship. And the idea that I would spend time overseas didn't bother me at all. 

At that time, Congress passed a bill enabling the University of Maryland and the Army Nurse Corps to jointly offer a full tuition scholarship, room, board, books, everything to future nurses with the agreement that they would spend three years on active duty in the Army Nurse Corps. It was a highly competitive scholarship and your clinical experiences, internships were all at Walter Reed Army Hospital. And I was very fortunate enough to be accepted into that program. 

So I actually joined the army at 18. And my first two years, I was paid as a private first class, and then we all wound up with them. My classmates and I in the Walter Reed Army Institute of Nursing in the summer of 1967. So that's how I got in the army. And I graduated with the entire University of Maryland class on, I think it was the Saturday the day before Mother's Day, and was a civilian that one day and then the next day I took the oath of office as a second lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps, and spent three years in the Army Nurse Corps.

Lee J. Bentch  05:18

After that, where did you end up? 

Barbara Kautz  05:21

Well, my first deployment was to Letterman Army Hospital, which was the most popular place for people coming back from Vietnam to go. So I knew I had a pretty good chance of going to Vietnam. And I asked to be assigned somewhere in the hospital where I might learn some things. The head nurse had had a bad experience with someone who graduated from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Nursing. And it was somebody who thought because she had been at Walter Reed, she knew more than she did. She had it in her head that all students would be like that. And I had to fight to get into the recovery room. And then I had to fight her. And unfortunately, there were other things going on.

In the four months, I was at Letterman, which is at the Presidio at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge that made it impossible. I think I have to get out of San Francisco. And the day that I was going to go ask for orders to go somewhere else, which is in January of 1970. I got orders for Vietnam, so the army took care of it for me. And I may be the only nurse, only person you ever meet, who was actually relieved to go to Vietnam because it got her out of a miserable situation.

Lee J. Bentch  06:43

Her exposure to death and the war wounds she treated has impacted her for over 50 years.

Barbara Kautz  06:49

95% of them were American, Vietnamese, Korean and Thai from the field. And then there were a handful of Vietnamese civilians, primarily children, who had one way or another been damaged by the instruments of war. 

Lee J. Bentch

So what were your feelings?

Barbara Kautz 

I hated it. We had a higher death rate in the neuro ICU than we did in the emergency room. Our ward master, which was the senior NCO on the ward, and was in charge of riding herd on a bunch of young guys in their, mostly in their 20s. And he was always scrubbing the floor. And I couldn't figure out why. Until one day, I realized that some of the patients smelled. And I figured out finally what they smelled like, and it was decaying flesh. And he always had oil of wintergreen in the water that he used to scrub the floor. I can’t stand anything with wintergreen in it. I just can’t! It was very, very hard to see a young guy, and many of them younger than me. Who would have, who were, you had a sense that their lives as they knew it were over. 

Oh, the first nurse who came into the ward after me and I are still very good friends. Her first name is Carol. And she tells me I never saw it. But she tells me that our head nurse, who was a wonderful man, would sometimes go and surreptitiously turn off, unplug, somehow or another, remove the patient from the ventilator surreptitiously, because he was quite sure that this was a guy who was gonna die anyway. But I never saw that. 

The worst night there. We had four men who died. 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00. As soon as we would get rid of…take one guy and put him in a body bag. We'd put another guy. And they were, all four of them, were people who had come in that day. Two of them were Americans. Two of them were Vietnamese ARVN soldiers: Army of Vietnam Soldiers. And by the end of the shift, I was in tears. 

And Ted was there but he never left the nurse's station. He was doing paperwork. He was a fill in for somebody who was on R&R. And Ted, you know, he said to me, I had been on that ward for eight months, which gave me the option of going to another ward. And he said to me, you know, you can do it. You can leave. It's all right. And I said I don't want to leave you. You're the best head nurse. Well not that I had a lot of experience with head nurses, but you're the best head nurse I've ever had. And he said, Listen, I'm an old lifer. I'll be fine. But you need to take care of yourself. So I went that day and asked to be sent to the recovery room, which was an easy out. And it was okay. But I missed the people who worked on the neuro ICU. Because we were, we were crazy. We were a unit. We took care of each other.

Lee J. Bentch  10:36

So did you ever feel like you were in danger? 

Barbara Kautz  10:40

No. I was in Long Binh, which was the biggest Army post. I should rephrase that. From the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. No, I did not feel I was in any danger. Even though we did have rockets and incoming and outgoing we could hear every day. Every night, I was more in danger of being assaulted by American men who were high on drugs. And that did happen. Where we were located was within viewing sight of the jail, which was called Long Binh Jail, or we called it LBJ. And our Chief Nurse, last name was Ledbetter. So she said I'm gonna get concertina wire and wrap it around the nurses, the junior nurses quarters to protect you. And then we would call that, well if she does that, then we'll be in LBJ. 

Lee J. Bentch  11:39

Before becoming an Army nurse, Barbara was an exchange student in Denmark. She made ongoing friendships that gave her a deep perspective of how Europe appreciates America. 

Barbara Kautz  11:49

I mean, you can put any piece of music you want in this, but I have a real hard time listening to I wanna be an American, or I'm glad I am an American, Lee Greenwood song. It shows there's something about it that I just don't like. I'm proud to be an American, I am proud to be in America. And one of the things that makes me proud is that my Danes, everyone looks at Denmark as an ideal country. And they know that they have a good healthcare system, and that they have a leadership role in the world, or in Europe that most people or the people my age know it that is unique. Because of the social services they do have, which of course cost them a huge amount in terms of taxes, but they admire us. And the reason they admire us is because we have never forgotten Europe after World War II. And we were the first country to say we have to support Ukraine.

Lee J. Bentch  13:03

Barbara is an extraordinary person who continues to help people currently living on the Maine coast with her husband. We're glad she could join us today.

Barbara Kautz  13:12

What I have seen in the last few years is a tendency for  people to forget about the original meaning of Memorial Day, the fact that we have lost something, and that bothers me.

George Bush Sr.1989 13:28

On Memorial Day, we give thanks for the blessings of freedom and peace and for the generations of Americans who have won them for us. 

Bill Clinton 2001 13:40

Americans around the nation take this day to enjoy friends and family. But we come, again, to Arlington. To remember how much was given so that we could enjoy this day and every day in freedom.

George W. Bush 2008 13:55 

The men and women we honor here serve for liberty. They sacrificed for liberty and in countless acts of courage, they died for liberty.

Barack Obama 2016 14:05

We are so proud of them. We are so grateful for their sacrifice. We are so thankful to those families of the fallen. May God bless our fallen and their families, may He bless all of you, and may forever bless these United States of America.

Lee J. Bentch  14:33

You are listening to the Crow's Feet: Life as We Age Memorial Day salute. 

As a writer, I'd like to share with you a short essay I wrote about Memorial Day last year. We've grown accustomed to holidays being celebratory. The one day that stands out as a mismatch between its meaning and how people celebrate it, is Memorial Day. The last Monday of May is a day meant to honor and remember the men and women who gave their lives defending our country. It is a day to visit national cemeteries and battlefields, and thank those departed for sacrificing their lives for our freedom. But over time, the breadth and depth of Memorial Day lost true meaning it has become a weekend focused on jumpstarting summer. 

The Memorial Day weekend typically begins with the following conversations. The boss says Happy Memorial Day. We're having a Memorial Day party bring beer says your colleague. The neighbors are going to the beach. The cousins are headed to Cancun. The neighborhood is having a community barbecue with fireworks. What are we doing? Say the kids. Memorial Day sales are rampant at the stores creating a compelling reason to shop, says my wife. 

What happened to a quiet day of reflection? An afternoon at the local national cemetery? Is it too much to ask? In the case of a fallen soldier sent to defend our freedom, killed doing their job, honoring them should be our primary concern, especially on Memorial Day. Eating a hot dog at a picnic on Memorial Day is not how I choose to remember my friend's son who died in Iraq on May 28 2007. Nor does taking a trip to the Bahamas on Memorial Day help me understand the futility of my long lost cousin’s death at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The Memorial Day sale at Best Buy doesn't help soothe the haunting thoughts I still have about my neighbor's son killed during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968. The ghosts of 13 Marines killed at the Kabul airport August 26 2021 shall linger on our minds for years to come. To those who have served and died. I salute you. To those currently on active duty or discharged. I salute you. 

There are three things about our veterans that we should all know. Memorial Day in May is a solemn day of remembrance for those who have fallen while serving in the military. Veterans Day in November is a day of thanks for all who serve that are alive. Every day should be a day of thanks for active and reserve members of the military. 

We should never forget those who paved the way for freedom. They paid the ultimate price. 

Thank you for listening. I would like to thank the Crow’s Feet team for their production and editing support. Nancy Peckenham, our founder and editor in chief, Rich Halten, our technical and sound engineer, and Nancy Franklin, our marketing specialist, along with a variety of pro suite writers and podcasters Jan Flynn, Jean Feldeisen, Jane Trombley, Betsy Allen, Melinda Blau, Ace Acevedo and myself. I am Lee Bentch.

 (Amazing Grace played on bagpipes)