War heroes’ sacrifices let us live our daily lives
The day before Republican presidential candidates were scheduled to debate on national TV, I received an email from a man named Darrell Abramowitz, who teaches Mexican-American Studies at a high school in Houston.
He wrote in part, “I just read your article from about 5 years ago on Lance Corporal Jose Jimenez. Coincidentally, it looks like Monday is also the anniversary of when he was killed in action, so I’m thinking that would be as good of a day as any to talk about him with the students.”
He’s right. It would be.
The first name cut into Row 2 of the black granite slab that is Panel 18W of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., is “Jose F. Jimenez.”
He was born in 1946, the same year as former President Donald Trump, only Jimenez was born in Mexico City.
He stayed behind in Mexico when his mother and sister came to the United States. He joined them after a few years, and attended elementary school and high school in Eloy, where his friends called him JoJo.
He enjoyed school, was president of the
Future Farmers of America club, and after having spent most of his life in a small town, far removed from the rancor and protests of those tumultuous times, he decided to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Some years back his sister Pilar told me, “He loved this country. He believed that it had done many good things for me and my mother. And he had friends who were drafted, and some who enlisted. So he decided to join. He felt like he owed this country much.”
Jimenez was sent to Vietnam, where he was killed in action on Aug. 28, 1969, during a firefight for which he posthumously was awarded the Medal of Honor, our nation’s highest military honor.
His citation reads:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a Fire Team Leader with Company K, Third Battalion, Seventh Marines, First Marine Division in operations against the enemy in the Republic of Vietnam on 28 August 1969.
On that date Lance Corporal Jimenez’ unit came under heavy attack by North Vietnamese Army soldiers concealed in well-camouflaged emplacements. Lance Corporal Jimenez reacted by seizing the initiative and plunging forward toward the enemy positions. He personally destroyed several enemy personnel and silenced an antiaircraft weapon.
Shouting encouragement to his companions, Lance Corporal Jimenez continued his aggressive forward movement. He slowly maneuvered to within ten feet of hostile soldiers who were firing automatic weapons from a trench and, in the face of vicious enemy fire, destroyed the position.
Although he was by now the target
of concentrated fire from hostile gunners intent upon halting his assault, Lance Corporal Jimenez continued to press forward. As he moved to attack another enemy soldier, he was mortally wounded.
Lance Corporal Jimenez’ indomitable courage, aggressive fighting spirit and unfaltering devotion to duty upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and of the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.
Note that last part. His country. Jimenez’s body was buried in Mexico, but for years his family wanted to move his remains to the U.S., next to the grave of his mother, who suffered so much when her son was lost.
That eventually happened thanks to a local colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, who, with some friends and colleagues, made the transfer possible.
Not long after I first wrote about Jimenez I heard from a representative of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services. The department names its facilities after Medal of Honor recipients.
There was a new building opening in Nashville and it was to be named after Jose. For the sacrifice he made for his country.
I haven’t thought about Jimenez in years.
I’d like to believe our war dead forgive us for forgetting them. I hope that is so. It is their sacrifice that allows us to get caught up in things mundane and petty, in the selfish concerns of our everyday lives. In crass politics.
Luckily, we occasionally are gifted a reminder of what – and who – is important, like when a teacher in far-off Houston writes an email.
The great American poet Randall Jarrell, a veteran of World War II, has a poem about war and remembrance that reads in part:
Profits and death grow marginal: Only the mourning and the mourned recall
The wars we lose, the wars we win; And the world is — what is has been.