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Lexington and Buena Vista held Memorial Day ceremonies over the weekend, honoring the men and women who gave the last full measure of devotion to our country.
“There is no ‘celebration’ of Memorial Day,” said Paul Lilly, a retired Air Force colonel who spoke at Buena Vista’s ceremony on Sunday that was sponsored by the American Legion Post 126.
“Our honorees today are not here. They lay in peace in cemeteries both in the U.S. and many foreign countries,” he continued. “They do not lie in stores that want you to come this day and celebrate by a purchase of a grill, a tool, an item of clothing, or whatever at 25% off. This is not a commercial shopping day, but a somber day of respect of those who gave all for their country.”
Lilly recalled that, during his time on active duty, that many clubs had a “missing man” table, full of symbols representing some aspect of the sacrifice made by these men and women, purity of their motives when answering the call to serve; a bread plate with a lemon slice and a pinch of salt to represent the bitter fate of those killed, captured, or missing overseas and the tears endured by their families; an inverted glass to represent the fallen’s inability to join in the day’s toast; and a candle to represent the light of hope.
At Lexington’s ceremony on Monday sponsored by the George C. Marshall Chapter of the Military Officers Association of America, Mayor Frank Friedman gave a brief history of Memorial Day.
The day began as an informal holiday called Decoration Day, which was created on May 5, 1868, by Gen. John W. Logan. The intent of the day was to “establish the practice of strewing flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of fellow Americans who died in defense of our country.” A hundred years later, Congress formalized the holiday as the last Monday in May, renaming it Memorial Day.
“Today we pause to remember all the brothers and sisters who make it possible for us to gather in peace,” Freidman concluded. “I encourage you to make time to visit and to decorate the graves of our heroes as has been the tradition for 155 years.”
Col. Travis Homiak, a 1994 graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and the Institute’s Marine instructor with the Naval ROTC unit, spoke about two men who were killed in action under his command in the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion in the Upper Sangin River Valley in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan in 2011: Sgt. Daniel Gurr of Vernal, Utah, and Cpl. Adam Buyes of Salem, Oregon. Both men were 21 years old when they died.
“On the one hand, you could count yourself as lucky because it was only two, but it was two too many,” he remarked.
Gurr, who died on Aug. 5, 2011, was a member of the battalion’s Force Reconnaissance Platoon. Gurr, Homiak said, took a lot of inspiration from his grandfather who had also been a Marine; he liked to hunt and fish and planned to marry his high school sweetheart after his deployment ended.
“Unfortunately, I did not know him particularly well before he left us,” Homiak said. “As often happens, it was a case where it was the occasion of his death that brought me to know him much better, and I certainly ended up knowing him much better than I would have had he lived. And I do think about that often.”
Buyes, on the other hand, Homiak knew much better. Buyes served as a radio operator with Charlie Company Headquarters in the battalion. He wasn’t a reconnaissance Marine by trade, although, Homiak noted, “he certainly earned that title on our deployment.”
“He was a kid everybody liked,” he said. “It’s always those kids who end up being taken from you.”
Due to the nature of his job, when he went out with the other Marines on reconnaissance patrols, Buyes carried a heavier ruck, meaning he had to “work his tail off” to keep pace with the other Marines.
“By nature of his personality, both his enthusiasm and his grit were infectious,” Homiak said. “It was his habit during in any security haul, before move into final position, that he was always the guy swapping stories and certainly the one making smart-alecky comments … I will not forget those memories of walking alongside him and those comments of his as we finished our movements through the green zone.”
Buyes was killed on the unit’s last mission in Afghanistan on Nov. 26, 2011, roughly two weeks before the unit was redeployed.
Homiak said that he thinks about his experience in Afghanistan “just about every day, in a way that I don’t think about my similar deployments in Yemen or Iraq.” Whether that is because Afghanistan was his last combat deployment or the fact that the nature of the combat was different from what he saw in Iraq was different, he isn’t sure.
“I expect I will think about that place for the rest of my life, but I have to confess that I don’t necessarily think about Daniel and Adam every day, though I have no doubt that their parents and their loved ones certainly do,” he said. “I certainly won’t forget them; it’s just that they’re not foremost in my thoughts. I expect that something similar can be said for the individuals Rockbridge County lost in Afghanistan – we might not think about them every day, but they’re never far from our thoughts.”
Both Lilly and Homiak made mention of several soldiers who gave their lives in service of our country. Lilly noted the “Bedford Boys,” the 19 soldiers from Bedford who were killed during the invasion of Normandy and three others who were killed in the following months, and Maj. Thomas Koritz, who was killed during a late-night bombing run over Basra, Iraq, on Jan. 17, 1991, while Homiak mentioned Rockbridge County High School alums Chase Prasnicki and Drew Ross, who were both killed in Afghanistan. While he didn’t know Chase, Homiak said he did know Drew as the son of Steve Ross, his swimming coach at VMI.
“That’s what makes this day special for me – it’s about the remembrance,” Homiak said. “This is the sole reason for Memorial Day, to call to mind those who have lost their lives in service of our country – in this case, in Afghanistan, trying to do something good in a country that probably always presented an insurmountable problem. But they went, and they gave their all, and for that we should remember them.”
