Day 94, Walk for Warriors

Requiem for a Soldier

You never lived to see
What you gave to me
One shining dream of hope and love
Life and liberty

With a host of brave unknown soldiers
For your company, you will live forever
Here in our memory

In fields of sacrifice
Heroes paid the price
Young men who died for old men's wars
Gone to paradise

We are all one great band of brothers
And one day you'll see we can live together
When all the world is free

I wish you'd lived to see
All you gave to me
Your shining dream of hope and love
Life and liberty

We are all one great band of brothers
And one day you'll see - we can live together
When all the world is free

Some days the morning comes quickly as if by surprise. Bainbridge’s morning was still and cool, with a bluish haze lying upon it making it appear to me as an ancient world of stray dogs and ruin. I walked quietly among houses and shops until I reached a country road that soon lost its pavement. The light vanished except for a background of rising, pallid grayness.

I startled a flock of crows who had gathered to spend the night in a gnarled oak tree on the rim of the town. They sounded and looked like a band of marauders waiting to attack at day break. They spoke to me in brash tones as if to say, “Get out of here, stranger. You are not wanted.” I have never quite ignored the crows of my walks. Their presence seemed to me a necessary element of any experience out in the world on foot. I accepted their haranguing as I would the flawed tones of a relative who would always be with me no matter how much I complained.

Back on my red earth I felt at home and marched with the purpose of one who knew his journey would soon end. There was barely enough light to measure my steps but I went on as the spears of the sun began their relentless advance on the pine forest to my east.

A filthy gray terrier scrambled out of the pine forest with a look of utter terror on her face. She ran up to me as if to warn me that monsters were on her heels, and that I should run for cover. She made brief eye contact with me. The morning light made her eyes glow. The terrified animal disappeared into the forest on the other side of the road; another apparition, vanishing before I could grasp it’s meaning.

The first of a series of tanker trucks rushed by me enveloping me in waves of red dust that rose and fell with each passing. I had not tasted the earth until they joined me. The insects seemed to like what they saw because they started up again with a thumping din until they tired. I reached a knoll that was covered with a thin garden of pines. I drank a bottle of water as I leaned against a skinny tree. I touched its rough bark as a woodpecker began her tap, tapping above me.

The checkered flag must have been waved deep in the woods because the caravan of tanker trucks raced by me in succession. I thought it might be time to walk back toward Shotwell Road before I got rolled up under an eighteen wheeler with a deadline. I headed for the river at double-time pace.

After walking back through town I stalled on the trestle over the railroad tracks. A train with sixty box cars rumbled by next to the river with a steady bump, ump, bump, ump, bump, ump. I remembered putting a nickel on the tracks somewhere near Stockton, California in the summer of 1963. Maybe the rising heat of the morning or the sound of the creaking train enlivened an atrophied synapse in my brain, but the memory of dashing away from the crime scene reappeared as clear as can be.

I wanted one more dose of downtown Bainbridge before I retired the walk. I liked standing in front of a flagging building, one rotted or leaning in fatigue. I tried to imagine who visited it and why. The sunlight had slithered through the eastward structures and began to heat the back of my neck. I moved two steps to the left to find momentary shade as I peered into the opaque window of an abandoned Town Hall.

Walking back to the seedy motel at the intersection of two state arteries, I passed a fish restaurant with a sign that read, “Fried Shrimp and Gravy Special”. McDonald’s was busy with workers loading up on breakfast and hot coffee. I ordered a large coffee to go. The counter girl was happy and offered me a hearty, “Good morning, sir.” I countered right back with a, “I’m just fine, darlin’. How you?” When in Bainbridge...



CPL Jonathan Ayers' Family To Accept His Silver Star Posthumously in Ceremony Celebrating His Life
Mar 26, 2009 at 10:43 AM

CPL Jonathan Ayers

"I want this ceremony to be a celebration," said the corporal's father, Bill Ayers. "He was military. He liked spit-and-polish type things and would fuss at us if our shoes weren't cleaned just right. Pride in his country was paramount."

From Newsblaze.com
Published: March 26,2009

Atlanta-Area Soldier Will Be Honored Posthumously Sunday
Amid a formal gathering of family, friends, Soldiers, civic and public officials, Brig. Gen. Joseph Schroedel (commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, South Atlantic Division) will present a posthumous Silver Star medal to Bill and Suzanne Ayers, the parents of Army Cpl. Jonathan R. Ayers, at Shiloh High School in Snellville, Ga., March 29.

Ayers, 24, of Snellville was killed in action July 13, 2008, while as a machine gunner, he defended his unit against a vicious enemy attack.
His unit, the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team from Vicenza, Italy, came under the deadliest attack since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan when the outpost was attacked by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades in the Kunar Province.

After graduating from Snellville's Shiloh High School, Ayers enlisted in the Army in April 2006 and went straight from basic and advanced individual training at Fort Benning, Ga., to the 173rd.

"I want this ceremony to be a celebration," said the corporal's father, Bill Ayers. "He was military. He liked spit-and-polish type things and would fuss at us if our shoes weren't cleaned just right. Pride in his country was paramount."

Also, the mayor of Snellville, Jerry Oberholtzer, has proclaimed March 29 as "Corporal Jonathan R. Ayers Day" in the City of Snellville.
Oberholtzer said he and the residents are honoring Ayers "not only as a community hero but as a true American hero."

When Bill and Suzanne Ayers receive the Silver Star on behalf of their son March 29, they will be receiving the third highest military decoration that can be awarded to a member of any branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is, also, the third highest award given for valor in the face of the enemy.

©2010 John Van Dyke Cote’
All Rights Reserved

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