Best Bitter

Memorial Day 2026

We were at my parents’ house and Mother asked if my brother and I wanted our beat up green footlockers and I said sure but didn’t Dad want them and Dad said why would I want them they’re not mine. And I said what do you mean they’re not yours? Didn’t you bring them home from the navy? And Dad said haven’t you heard of the colors ARMY green and NAVY blue and I said oh, well then whose footlockers are they? And then I said oh no they’re the army man’s who lived next door? The guy who died in Vietnam? And I said Jesus I wrote my name on it. Why did you let me write my name on it? And why did you let me use it as a toy box?

And Dad said the soldier wouldn’t have minded that you wrote your name on it. He had little boys and he liked you with your little girl pink-ness and strollers filled with dolls. He was always glad to see you when you came out to play. It’s ok. And Dad said those footlockers were hardly in Vietnam before they came back home and I said what do you mean he’d been there for years and Dad said no he’d only been there for two weeks.

And I said well I just got this story so wrong. I thought the footlockers were Dad’s and I thought the army man had been there for years and I thought he was a captain or a Green Beret or someone important. And Dad said no he was just a kid. And he was killed so early into the war that it was noteworthy. I remember all of us neighbors talking about him. You know---one dead out of a thousand was something; one dead out of 58,000 was just a number.

And somehow this makes it all worse. It’s been decades since that army man died and I was just a little girl and it’s OK that I got his story so wrong. But it doesn’t feel OK. It seems as if I should have gotten his last story right and known that he was younger than my youngest is now. I should have known that he wasn’t a battle-weary and war-scarred veteran.

I should have known that he’d just gotten to that jungle across the world. The footlocker had barely arrived in Vietnam before it was sent back home again. Still today I can read the number 131091 so clearly written in black marker. I look at the date written and realize that this footlocker had served in the 1940s and again in the 1960s. The footlocker had a longer life than my friend the army man next door.

And I thought did the footlocker come home next to his body or did they just load up a bunch of them? Did they have a plane just for bodies and another one for footlockers? Or had we not yet gotten that good at the logistics of returning dead boys and their boots and bibles?

And I said I got most of this story wrong but I know that his wife came over all the time didn’t she? And my mom said yes she came over because she was young with two little boys who liked to play army. She had no family around and so she got the boys bathed and tucked into bed and then she’d knock at our door late at night. We’d drink coffee and talk about the boy who was sitting around a campfire when a sniper shot him in the head.