The Story of the Tattered Old Flag
My first column
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in 20+years as a writer, never assume you know the real story, simply based on how things appear.
I was thinking about this when a lady told me a story about a tattered flag and her older brother Bob, who had served with the Marine Corps in the Korean War. Bob drove a tank in the “Forgotten War.”
Bob never wanted to talk about what he, his younger brother and their fellow servicemen had seen and experienced in that brutal war. Bob just wanted to live a quiet life back home in northwest Missouri, where he farmed for many years.
It did anger Bob, though, that people sometimes called Korea a conflict, rather than a war. Still, this never stopped him from living the motto of every Marine—semper fidelis (Latin for “always faithful”), as he raised the American flag on his farm every morning and lowered it every night. Even when the elements took a toll on the flag, Bob still raised and lowered the stars and stripes daily.
Like many of his generation, Bob’s world changed forever following June 25, 1950, when roughly 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel—the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. North Korea wanted to conquer South Korea and unify Korea under a communist regime. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War.
By the time the war ended in July 1953, approximately 5 million soldiers and civilians had died. The Korean peninsula is still divided today.
The war sometimes came up when a childhood friend and fellow Marine who had also served in Korea stopped by the farm to chat with Bob. They’d talk about Bob’s younger brother, who was barely 17 when he served with a frontline infantry unit of 200+ men in that godforsaken land. This brother was one of only four men in that unit who survived a massive attack. The childhood friend was part of the search and recovery mission that found him.
By all accounts, Bob’s brother was a goner, but that friend insisted he wasn’t leaving him behind. He credited the freezing cold, prayers from the teenaged infantryman’s mom and dad, and the grace of God for keeping Bob’s brother from bleeding to death.
I wonder if these thoughts raced through Bob’s mind sometimes as he faithfully raised his tattered American flag each morning and lowered it each evening.
People often noticed Bob’s flag as they drove by on the paved road near his farm. Sometimes they’d offer to buy him a new flag. His response was always the same. “Thank you kindly, but it’s important to me to leave this flag this way.”
It wasn’t until a niece (who was visiting Bob’s younger sister) asked to photograph Bob raising the flag one morning that his family began to learn why that tattered flag was so important to Bob, who was now 88. There were tears in Bob’s eyes as he spoke about the many torn lives and broken families that resulted from that ugly war in Korea. He knew he and his brother were among the blessed ones who got to come home.
So, when you see American flags flying this Memorial Day, don’t be offended if a few are a little tattered. There might be much more to the story than you ever realized.
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Thank you for telling Bob’s story.
Welcome to the Iowa Writers' Collaborative, Darcy!