Honoring Heroes

I've been away for awhile (Cannes!?), but I'm back. Just in time for Memorial Day. To honor all those who have served and their families, I'm reprinting a book review that I wrote last May. Since then, the book has been a finalist for a National Book Award and come out in paperback. It's a timeless memorial of service, sacrifice, and loss.

See here for the National Book Award citation and an excerpt from the book: http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2008_nf_sheeler.html

Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives, by Jim Sheeler. Penguin, $25.95 (304p) ISBN 978-1-59420-165-3

Marine Major Steve Beck has one of the toughest jobs in the military—one that he says "'has changed me in fundamental ways'"—and it's thousands of miles from a war zone.

Major Beck is a casualty assistance calls officer—the one responsible for "the knock." The moment that all military families live in dread of.

Pulitzer Prize-winning Rocky Mountain News reporter Sheeler had already attended a dozen military funerals when he met Major Beck at Fort Logan National Cemetery in Denver in 2004 and asked if he could shadow him.

This poignant and powerful chronicle of courage, sacrifice, grief, and recovery—gradual, halting, and never complete—is the result of Sheeler's two-year journey of discovery.

The narrative structure is circuitous. "The knock" comes first and with it an initial introduction to the families—wives, children, and parents—left behind. They, in turn, introduce us to the fallen soldiers and Marines—narratives that are completed by the testimony of their comrades. Later—as much as two years—the reporter returns to see how the families are coping.

The stories, however tragic, are important for Americans to hear if only to understand how much a few are sacrificing. There's amazingly little rancor here, but Sam Holder, Sr. admits that it bothers him "how disproportionately" the burden of military service is spread. (Marine Staff Sergeant Sam Holder, Jr., was killed in Iraq when he exposed himself to draw enemy fire away from an injured comrade. Holder earned the Silver Star for what his platoon leader called "'the most courageous act I have ever seen.'")

No matter how tough you are, you will be moved. And, you should be. I was stopped cold more than once and had to put the book aside for a while. My worst moment came when Dakota Givens, the young son of Army PFC Jesse Givens, who died when his tank plunged into a Euphrates River canal, asked if God would let him "be a little boy again" when he got to heaven so that he could play with his dad.

There are lots of heroes in this important book. Only some of them ever wore a uniform.