Memorial Day has come to mean many things for most Americans: The official start of summer, the first weekend by the pool, half-price sales at the mall.
Too many of us give too little thought to those this day is intended to honor: The brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice so others can live in liberty.
I was privileged to know as a neighbor and friend a man of sterling worth: John Moffitt of Richmond, Va., who spent 20 months in a German prison camp during World War II.
The letters he wrote home to his family, which were found after his parents’ deaths, reveal the gentle but indomitable spirit that endured 603 days of captivity.
Six days after being shot down and captured, Moffitt wrote to tell his parents the news and attempted to reassure them.
September 15, 1943
Dear Folks,
I am well and safe. I am a prisoner of war. I don’t have to do any work, and I have a good place to sleep and good food. I won’t be able to write very often. Inquire at the Red Cross to see what you can send me.
Moffitt admitted to me that the “good place to sleep” was a plywood board covered by a mattress of wood shavings. The “good food,” served in a dirty wooden tub, was artificial tea forbreakfast and some sort of soup for lunch. “There were always a few green worms floating in it,” he said wryly. “We always stirred it first to bring all the worms to the top.”
Those weren’t the worst hardships.
December 25, 1943
Dear Folks,
Christmas is about over. It is the second I have spent away from home, and I hope it will be the last. Of course, it is the first in prison. The barracks chief got a little tree from the Germans and we hung little pieces of tin and colored paper on it. We shaved white soap and strewed it around to look like snow. Some of us whittled toys of soap to put under it. It looks good. We had a midnight service last night in the church. We had a chocolate pudding for dinner today. Christmas wasn’t so good, but it could be a lot worse.
And we gripe about the high cost of gasoline.
Moffitt never complained of his time as a POW; he even found humor in some of the memories — recalling, for instance, that the morning “tea” was so awful some of the men used it to shave with rather than drink it.
But he never forgot the atrocities. He told me how prisoners who tried to escape were shot dead by the Germans and their bodies left on the ground for a day or more as an implicit threat to the others.
Yet Moffitt did not burden his family with the knowledge of what their 23-year-old son was enduring.
June 23, 1944
Dear Dad,
I’m writing this card on your birthday to let you know that I am thinking of you. I can’t send any of your birthday presents this year, but I’ll make up for it when I get home. I am feeling swell.
Those words define valor. And all over this wonderful country tonight, Americans, having feasted on hot dogs and hamburgers and ice cream and barbecue, will lie down and drift into untroubled sleep — secure in the freedom such sacrifices bought.
Our nation owes a debt we never can repay to our fallen warriors and those who survived. The sacrifices of men like Moffitt who served so bravely is what makes America great — and free.
Examiner Columnist Melanie Scarborough lives in Alexandria.
