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thedrifter
11-04-06, 05:48 AM
Fallen warriors -- we honor their sacrifice, grieve the price

I can scarcely believe as I write this, that 39 years ago, two Marines drove up our driveway and knocked on the door of our Bloomfield Hills home. It was 8:30 in the morning on November 6, 1968.

My mother would later think it providential that she and Dad had hosted an election party the night before (Nixon versus Humphrey) and allowed us kids to sleep in late on a school day, thus she was not home alone when the news came that her oldest son, Michael Robert Rich, had died 12 hours earlier in Vietnam.

Mike was the oldest of my five brothers. He bought me the first album I ever owned -- Chad and Jeremy. He taught me how to do back flips off the dock. He took me to see the Beatles perform at Olympia Stadium. I was 14 at the time. Vietnam was as far away as the moon to me.

Almost 40 years later, it is not surprising that I remember vividly that morning my brother's halting voice in my mother's bedroom upstairs. "Mom, there are two Marines downstairs."

She stood in the foyer, flanked by my brothers Chris, then 21, and Rob, 17. They recited as if by rote: "Mrs. Rich, the President of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson regrets to inform you "

My little brother Paul, then 12, and I stood out of view upstairs in our pajamas. My screams were summoned more from fear than grief.

I remember my mother making the phone calls from the kitchen phone: stoic, steady, on auto-pilot.

First, she called my father at the office. Then my brother Peter, who was subsequently pulled out of a lecture hall at Xavier University. He knew the minute his name was called.

My mother did not break down until my father arrived home from the office. They fell into each other's arms at the front door. They stood in that doorway, oblivious to the November chill for what seemed to me like an eternity. The sound of their adult sobs were devastating to me.

Mike had just graduated from Notre Dame University. He had just turned 22.

My father had tried to persuade Michael not to join the Marines. He felt Michael was joining as a rite of manhood and bravery on the front lines.

In retrospect, years later, my father said: "I knew the moment Michael told me that this was it. That he was gone. He would not come home." He'd lost the argument and his first-born son.

This past week, I read in the paper an obituary for Nicholas Manoukian, 22, of Lathrup Village, who died in Iraq on Saturday, Oct. 21. He was on his second tour in Iraq when the Humvee he was riding in drove over a bomb. In the photo, he is dark-haired and handsome, with his arm around his girlfriend, Danielle, whom he married last July.

Manoukian was one of at least 103 U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq in October. It's the biggest monthly total since January 2005, when 107 were killed.

When the toll of the battlefield comes to your doorstep, the numbers of casualties are never just numbers. Rather, they are searing losses multiplied.

In effect, what happened to me, to my parents, to my brothers, to our extended family and Mike's friends, happened 103 times across this country last month alone.

Since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, families in more than 2,800 homes have seen uniformed servicemen walk up their sidewalks to deliver tragic news.

The parallels between Vietnam and Iraq are often drawn and refuted, depending on political view. All I know is that Vietnam was a war waged to stifle the influence of Soviet-sponsored communism. It was a war that most of us didn't want and ultimately a war we didn't win -- all at a cost of 58,000 lives.

Iraq is a war waged in the president's words as a "central front on terror." It is a war that, at present, the majority of us do not want, and a war at this point, so ideological that victory is ill-defined, especially for those who believe the war was ill-conceived to begin with.

In its simplest terms, winning a war means justifying the gain against the loss of life. And the problem with war is you can't predict casualties.

In the aftermath of Vietnam, Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, admitted to bungled opportunities, bad decisions and regret. His hindsight is our collective national shame. For 58,000 reasons.

My father's fear was that when history played itself out, lives like my brother Michael's would be lost in vain. Surely many parents of soldiers lost in Iraq share the same haunting fear.

My brother's name appears on Section 39 west, Line 23, of the Vietnam War Memorial. I am proud of my brother's sacrifice, his courage, bravery and honor. I cannot say, however, that his death was justified by any gain.

Marney Rich Keenan's column runs in The Detroit News Features section on Thursdays and in Homestyle on Saturdays. You can reach her at (313) 222-2515 or mkeenan@detnews.com.

Ellie