Among Friends Have an opinion on this column? Submit a Letter to the Editor Click here to return to archives Old soldiers march on By Tad Bartimus Posted May 23, 2008 There used to be more pickups in the parking lot of VFW Post 919, just as there used to be more old soldiers inside around the polished wooden tables, drinking coffee and swapping stories about being pinned down by machine-gun fire on Guadalcanal, storming ashore at Omaha Beach or marching up the Burma Road. But from last Memorial Day to this, many a valiant man-in-arms who survived war's shadowed valleys has now been laid to rest in his green pasture. Veterans groups estimate World War II soldiers are now surrendering to cancer, heart disease and other frailties of old age at the rate of about 1,200 a day. Of the 16.1 million Americans who served in the armed forces from 1941 through 1945, only about 200,000 are expected to be alive by 2020. It is up to their comrades-in-arms to send them off with the official thanks of a grateful nation and a final graveside salute, replete with the playing of Taps, the sharp crack of rifle fire and a prayer of farewell for the fallen. Which is why, when the telephone rings early in the morning at Gary Dolan's house, the Trenton, Mo., farmer knows some of his chores will have to be deferred. "Yeah, I can do it," he told a caller one recent Tuesday. "Just tell me the time and place of burial." Dolan is a stalwart member in good standing of Post 919 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, but it wasn't always so. When he came back to his hometown following a Vietnam combat tour, he expected to be welcomed at the VFW. Instead, as he put it, he wasn't received "too kindly." He didn't go back for 35 years. But Trenton is a small town in a close-knit rural county in a patriotic state. As the years passed, Dolan's relationships with members of the "the greatest generation" that included his father and uncles deepened, the old veterans' attitudes changed, and, as Dolan recalled, "I started losing people I cared about -- my folks, their friends, my friends." "Most of us veterans lost a lot of people in war. War's a meat grinder. You throw all these nice people at it and they get all chewed up. It doesn't matter what war you fought in. It happens in every war. "When we were in the war, most of us never got to go to our friends' funerals," he said. "I came to realize that I can go to these guys' funerals here and a do a nice job of saying goodbye. It's payback." A few years ago, Dolan started volunteering for Post 919's honor guard. "I didn't have any responsibility except marching with the flag, and that was just fine with me. I did it out of respect. We can walk up there and pay our respects to someone who committed to give his life for his country." But as more members of Post 919 died, Dolan's responsibilities increased. "It's up to us younger guys now -- well, maybe we're not so young, but us Vietnam vets -- to fill the role the World War II men served at the post. And when we're gone, there'll be others coming on behind us, from Iraq and Afghanistan. There are always more old soldiers coming along behind." About once every couple of weeks, Dolan puts on his sharply creased and starched khaki VFW uniform and meets a dozen or so other volunteers at the VFW clubhouse. They collect their banners, the trumpet and the new American flag Dolan will help fold and present formally to the deceased's loved ones. It can take up to an hour for the group's two vans to reach one of the many country cemeteries scattered among three north Missouri counties served by the vets, and they always try to arrive an hour early to practice their precision drills. By the time they get back to the post to go their separate ways, they have donated a full morning or afternoon to their late comrade-in-arms. World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who share burial duties range from vigorous young fathers, such as reservist John Huber, a Green Beret who came back from Afghanistan to be a Missouri Highway patrolman, to longtime retiree Louis Pushkarsky, who returned to Trenton from World War II to become then-teenager Gary Dolan's high school chemistry teacher. "War is a life-changing experience," Dolan said. "If you haven't been in it, you can't understand it. If you have, and you made it through and you're still here, there's no need to talk about it because you understand one another." As there has never been a shortage of wars, it follows that there will always be young soldiers to fight them, and old men to remember and honor their dead. On this Memorial Day holiday, as they do on many other days, the honor guards of VFW Post 919 will stand at attention to pay their respects to their departed friends, knowing that some day others will do the same for them.