This Memorial Day comes amidst a difficult time: Americans trying to come to grips with a hot button presidential election; our country’s role in overseas conflict and war being questioned.
In Memoriam.
A Hero.
One definition: A soldier dying defending their county.
On Memorial Day this Monday, our unofficial first day of summer, our nation has set aside a time to honor and mourn men and women who died in military service for our country.
The day comes amidst a difficult time: Americans trying to come to grips with a hot button presidential election; our country’s role in overseas conflict and war being questioned.
“Now I worry,” said Chicago attorney Bill Coulson, the descendant of a soldier lost on the European killing fields of World War II.
“Our country seems to be at odds with each other; not talking,” said Coulson. “It’s got a big part of the world worried.”
A military buff and historian, Coulson began a lifelong trek years ago to study the horror of WWII’s Pacific Island battlegrounds. The former assistant U.S. attorney would bring comfort to families of soldiers killed or wounded in the war, unintentionally becoming an avatar of lost U.S. military dog tags and memorabilia found on those battlefields.
And he eventually found some healing for his own family last year.
But, back in 2012, Coulson returned to a North Carolina family a dog tag lost by a soldier who fought at Guadalcanal’s Alligator Creek battle in the South Pacific. That same year, he brought Chicago top cop Garry McCarthy a piece of barbed wire from Bloody Ridge, where McCarthy’s seriously wounded father had fought at Guadalcanal and where the Japanese were tripped up by barbed wire.
“When I walked the Bloody Ridge battlefield in Guadalcanal, it wasn’t hard to imagine the incredible horror of what these soldiers went through, sick, suffering from lack of food, no contact with family, no cellphones to call home, being shot at from secret caves.
