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 amid 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,” Coulson said. “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 World War II 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. I was in awe. They were very young. A generation of sacrifice.”
“But wars always claim innocent victims,” added Coulson. “The people of the isolated, remote Pacific Islands we brought into a war where we fought the Japanese lost their lives helping us. And their islands still house an armory of ordnance and live landmines yet to be removed.”
Like watching a movie that’s all too real
Generations change. So does the geography of war.
“Now, 80 years after a worldwide war for peace, war continues overseas and in our living rooms involving innocent victims of consequence … whether in Israel or Gaza or Ukraine … or a Pacific Islander stepping on a landmine they didn’t plant,” Coulson said.
“It was hard to believe that the Pacific Islands, now so lush and beautiful, once harbored such horror,” Coulson told Sneed. “Seeing where all these heroic American soldiers died really gripped me. It was like watching a movie.
“But, at the same time, the aftermath of war can be just as deadly.”
“There has been very little development in these islands,” Coulson added. “They are still pretty isolated and poor. So shame on us for not doing more to remove those landmines.”
So Coulson decided to give his research a break and “get to know the local people … to thank them for their innocent involvement in the war … for having to deal with such weapons of destruction.
“I found the island culture fascinating, where the little girls of Tulagi in the Solomon Islands would famously capture wasps and walk them buzzing at the end of a string; or the women of Espiritu Santos in the new island country of Vanuatu could make music by cupping and waving their hands in water which sounded like a symphony, a magical concert.”
A hero finally returns home
In 2023, Coulson’s journey to comfort World War II families came full circle with the homecoming of his great uncle, 26-year-old U.S. Army Air Corps pilot Lt. Roy Coulson Harms. He had been buried in a mass war grave in Europe and unidentified for 80 years.
Bill Coulson had never met his uncle.
“His loss was horrific, the family grief deep,” he told Sneed in 2023.
His great uncle’s parents, mired in the frightful fog of war for the rest of their lives, were never to see their son again. No handkerchief would be big enough to catch their tears, no arms wide enough to comfort them.
The World War II hero was finally buried next to the parents he never would see again in his Grafton, Wisconsin, hometown cemetery.
“Thank God, my uncle is finally resting in peace,” Coulson told Sneed then.
On Friday, he had this to say: “I hope the sacrifice of the lives of our soldiers will continue to breed peace and freedom … and we don’t let our political quarrels fritter that away.”
Sneedlings…
On a personal note: Worth the wait! Congrats to former business exec and my friend Dia Weil on her graduation June 2, when she receives a University of Chicago Master of Liberal Arts degree.
Saturday birthdays: actor Cillian Murphy, 48; actor Ian McKellen, 85; singer Leslie Uggams, 81; actor Octavia Spencer, 54 ... Sunday birthdays: Brent Musburger, 85; singer Stevie Nicks, 76; musician Lenny Kravitz, 60; actor Helena Bonham Carter, 58; South Park creator Matt Stone, 53.
