With Memorial Day approaching, I wanted to once again share some thoughts as to what it means to serve together in a combat zone. The following is the eulogy/letter sent out in early 2001 from a Marine Brother of our days in Viet Nam. It is regarding a fellow Marine we had just lost...and exemplifies the meaning of 'Brothers-in-Arms.' This eulogy/letter was sent to each of our group who had known Ronnie Earl Tisdale, since not all were able to attend his funeral.

"Ronnie Earl Tisdale was born on August 30th, 1946. He died this past Sunday, November 26th in the early morning hours at the age of 54. I had been with him in the early part of the week on Monday and Tuesday. I spoke with him on the phone from San Antonio on Thanksgiving Day. He told me he had already had his turkey. My wife and I were traveling to Santa Fe, New Mexico to see some old friends and he was very insistent on my promising that we would be very careful on the road. I assured him we would. On New Year's this past year, he had sent a hand made stylized cartooned card wishing Rosie and me a happy new year. It was quite humbling to get a New Year's greeting from a man who had spent the past 14 of those new years in a maximum-security prison. We can't change any of that.

We can only alter the future. That's why his friends from the war were so glad to find him. Just having him alive was good enough for us. He was our comrade. He was our friend. He was and will always be our brother. We have come to honor this warrior. The one who kept his word and made good on his promise to stand fast for his brothers. We did not want Ronnie to leave this earth feeling his life was a failure. Yes, he made mistakes. All of us have. The Ronnie Tisdale we knew over thirty years ago was more than a prisoner numbered 437918. Much more! He was a good and honorable man.

I met Ronnie in the summer of 1968 on Hill 10 just west of Dan Nang in the Republic of Vietnam. I was 18. He was 21. We were members of Alpha Co, 1st Btln., 7th Marine Regiment of the 1st Marine Division of the Pacific Fleet Marine Force. We were Marine infantrymen, known to ourselves as 'grunts,' and it was a rotten job on the best of days. If the mines and booby traps of the Viet Cong didn't get you, then you had to consider the consequences of running into and meeting up with their more organized brethren of the North Vietnamese Army. If we were lucky enough to avoid death or mutilation from these two groups, we then had to consider the possibilities of malaria, cellulitis, mosquitoes, rats, vipers or other vermin. We were either painfully parched or beat upon by the sun and its effects or soaked and saturated by the thick monsoon rains down to the bone. Wet beyond bathing. It was a pretty miserable existence. We got blisters on our feet that would not heal and dirt in our skin that would not wash out. We bathed when possible and not very often. We filled our canteens in mountain streams and rice paddies full of leeches as long as our fingers. We learned to appreciate the smallest things: a tin of food; a note from a neighbor back home; a picture of a girlfriend; a chunk of cheese; a warm beer; a lukewarm soda; a halfway decent breakfast in the chow hall back on the hill; a dry pair of socks; a dry anything; a cool anything; a kind word; a look of understanding of how scared and fearful this kind of war was that ate at our nerves and made us doubt so many things we had understood to be true before. This wasn't like the nice neat lines of the battle fields of WWI or II or Korea, for that matter. This was a messy, muddy attempt to stop the Communist threat of the Cold War days. This war was played on the world stage between surrogate representatives of the modern day equivalents of good and evil. Of course, we thought we were the good guys. We were the defenders of democracy taking on the Red Menace. For mom, apple pie and the girl we left behind. What we left mostly was our innocence, and quickly at that. A grunt on the front lines of the war in Vietnam had two things to look forward to: R & R, and the day he rotated out of country.

For some lucky ones, like me, a couple of breaks worked in our favor. First, I had been sent to Language School in Monterrey, California, and therefore, missed the Tet Offensive of 1968. Ronnie arrived in Vietnam in the middle of it all. Secondly, I was made one of the Company Commander's Radio Men and so I escaped the ordeal of being in the field every day and night. I was talking on the phone the other night with our former platoon sergeant Pete Peterson, and Pete told me to 'make sure his family knows what a brave man Ronnie was.' He remembered a day in May of 1968 when Alpha Co. took a lot of casualties on Operation 'Allen Brook.' 'I can only imagine what that day must have been like for Ronnie,' Pete said. He recounted how the grown son of Lt. Paul Cobb had called him this year after receiving a letter from Ronnie telling the son what exactly happened to his father on the day his dad died. Ronnie was close enough to hear the AK-47 round hit his father's chest. Folks, that is intensity and intimacy to a higher degree than most of us want to get! The son was so moved and grateful to have had someone write; someone actually present on the day his father died over 32 years ago. Ronnie told him what a great man and leader of men his dad was.

We all respond differently to the tasks we take on and that take us on in life. Some question their courage. Others question what they should wear to the party tomorrow night. However deep or shallow the furrow we plant our spiritual imperfect human feet in, we all come finally to the last harvest. The human wheat made into soulful bread for God to eat. Ronnie Tisdale did what God wanted him to do: He realized and understood deeply at the end of his days what the plan was. He reclaimed the honor and dignity to which he was born. He poignantly reached for the opportunity to remember and believe he had been heroic. Though difficult, his life had made sense. And, that it had been useful.

God Bless You, Ronnie Tisdale."