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| Photo courtesy Fred Lapides |
On Feb. 23, 1969, Pfc. Austin scrambled out of a safe foxhole and, with his own body, shielded the injured and unconscious Mr. Payne, then a 19-year-old lance corporal, from a hand grenade and rifle fire. The mortally wounded Pfc. Austin shot a North Vietnamese soldier who was storming their position, then fell dead 39 days past his 21st birthday. Mr. Payne has traveled to Washington from California over the years to touch Oscar's name on Panel 32W Row 88 of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. He has left letters and thanks at the Wall for a life that he concedes wavered into alcoholism and despair before he regained his balance.
Families of wartime dead and veterans like Mr. Payne know precisely how to observe this Memorial Day, when newly turned earth lies raw on military graves resulting from the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts, which took 248 U.S. lives. Elite soldiers of the Old Guard placed individual American flags over the weekend at each grave in Arlington National Cemetery's gardens of stone. Today at 11 a.m., President Bush plans to lay a wreath at Arlington and express a grateful nation's homage, then meet with families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Communities across the land prepared for ceremonies, parades and other rituals of remembrance today. At 3 p.m. local time much of the nation will be asked to pause at airports, sports stadiums, shopping malls and other public places for the "minute of reflection" that became a fixture in recent years. An estimated 35 million Americans were expected to travel during the long holiday weekend. For some 162,000 Washington-area families, the only memorial in mind was Lane Memorial Bridge and getting across the Chesapeake on that span's busiest weekend of the year.
It was just that way for Deborah Peterson of Alexandria until Oct. 23, 1983, when Islamic Jihad terrorists drove more than a ton of TNT into a U.S. military barracks in Beirut. The 241 soldiers, sailors and Marines killed there included her 20-year-old brother, Marine Cpl. James C. Knipple. "Until then, except for our father who was in the Navy, we were just very typical, complacent Americans who thought of Memorial Day as the opening day of the pool and a three-day weekend and a barbecue," says Mrs. Peterson, who works in the pharmacy at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington. "Now we go up to the cemetery very often. I haven't worked a Memorial Day for 20 years." She says the family also visits Arlington National Cemetery each Oct. 23 — "the day of remembrance" for the Beirut families — and on the anniversary of the death from cancer of her father, retired Navy Capt. John Knipple, buried one row over and five graves down from his son in Section 59. It is in Section 59 that 21 of the Beirut dead lie, along with two of the 19 U.S. servicemen killed June 26, 1996, in a similar terrorist bombing at the Khobar Towers military complex in Dharan, Saudi Arabia. At a ceremony in 1996 near the cedars of Lebanon planted in Section 59, the Knipple clan befriended Fran and Gary Heiser beside the grave of their son, Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Michael Heiser. He was 25 when he died in Khobar Towers.