This is a guest opinion column

Few know how to deal with another’s sorrow. On a long ago Autumn day, not unlike any other brisk day in late 1983, I received a call. My caller said a close mutual friend, Kevin, was believed killed in a shocking bombing in Beirut, Lebanon.

Kevin was a Marine slain by a suicide bomber who drove a non-descript truck laden with the equivalent of six tons of explosives. Upon detonation, the Marines’ quarters collapsed in a cloud of acrid smoke, fire, and mammoth blocks of rubble. 241 Marines died that day and many, many more were critically wounded, sent to hospitals across the region.

I remember Kevin every time there is a veterans’ event. He was a military classmate of mine. Over a long specialist course we came to share stories, friendship, his great sense of humor, and bonhomie. We all formed a fateful bond at that course, one which remains for a lifetime. After the class, we all went our separate ways, remaining in touch professionally or for personal reasons. Our conflicts in those days against terrorists, warlords, spies and dictators’ whims were seldom newsworthy, though often fatal.

There are enigmatic military memorials I’ve visited which indicate deaths occurred on a certain date, but no names are recorded. Like many such military actions of our history, our nation’s deployment to Beirut is little remembered these days. In reality, there is little to remember, except that our nation called on its young defenders to go there. They did, and there too they died.

We commemorate these fellow Americans on various events throughout the year. Although today I am well over three score years on this earth, Kevin was not granted that time. He will be forever in my mind’s eye in the prime of life. I remember in particular his smile and laughter. It is as hearty today as it was then. We will, in my mind’s eye, always be together with other friends on military exercises, at restaurants, or after hours filled with good cheer, good jokes, and camaraderie.

If I were asked how best to remember those lost in skirmishes, bombings, firefights, or battles gone by, I’d say this. No one swore ‘to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States’ with the intention to die in its defense. All hoped to live, raise, or be with their families, in a peaceful, happy world.

During their military service, death came to some. Others were wounded, and remain blind, or legless, armless, or otherwise maimed in hospitals to this day. Some came home in body, but their minds, some might say their souls, were damaged. We who live owe those who suffered to stand with them in solidarity. We also owe a debt to their families.

I think veterans’ commemorations should not only be celebrated by parades on the street, but by visits to the hospital. Or perhaps we should make a phone call, or visit one of the thousands of survivors of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

When we remember the dead, we should remember the brothers, sisters, children, wives, husbands, and parents left behind as well.

The empty space of the lost parent can never be filled by words, only by deeds, if only by a visit.

There are fathers today who cry at the very remembrance of their son’s death, even decades ago. The woman whose husband was evaporated by a direct hit should never be left to fend for herself, nor that family’s children, nor parents. The old sailor whose legs were lost to gangrene should have visitors at his old folks’ home.

I recall an old soldier I visited once at the “Altenheim” in St. Louis. I asked him why he kept the picture of his Army company from World War 1 on his spare room’s wall. “So I’ll never forget the boys we left beneath the sod in France, Johnny.”

Lest we forget, l’d mention one more remembrance. A battle cruiser sailor, now 90 years old, told me this story.

He said that his ship was ordered to Murmansk, in the Soviet Union, in the early 1940’s. His ship was to recover those American sailors whose ships had been sunk by German submarines. “One of the sailors told me his merchant ship took a torpedo, and all hands got on board a life boat. While they floated amid the wreckage, oil, and flames of their vessel, the German submarine surfaced. The Captain of the sub hailed them, and having no choice, they rowed over to the Germans. The submariner said, ‘War is hell. I regret that I have no room for you on my ship, but here is food for you, and a map to Murmansk. Farewell.’ With that, the food was delivered, and the submarine departed. The merchantmen were saved by their enemy.”

The old sailor’s enigmatic story remained with me. I’ve thought much about the meaning of war as a result. Perhaps such conversations and reflections today would lend such memories a meaning which is valuable indeed.

John W. Davis is a retired U.S. Army officer living in Athens, Alabama.