Why Memorial Day Matters to Me: The Uncle Lee Habeeb Never Knew, Killed in WWII

On this episode of Our American Stories, our host, Lee Habeeb, shares a very personal Memorial Day story about the uncle he never knew.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
And we continue with our Memorial Day special all show
long here on our American stories. This one is a
personal story. It happens every Memorial Day. I'm drawn back
to a day long before I was born, the day
my mother found out her brother was killed in World
War Two. It was before there were support groups for

(00:38):
such things, before we knew what PTSD was, before anyone
dared to talk about war and the carnage it leaves behind.
The war was a defining chapter of my mom's life.
Almost every family she knew had at least one son
fighting in the war. After Pearl Harbor, my mom told us,
men young and old alike rushed to serve their country.

(01:01):
Her brother John was one of them. He joined the
army at eighteen, along with several other young men. Living
in her five story walk up in West New York,
New Jersey, On a sweltering fall day in nineteen forty,
four months after D Day, a black government car pulled
up in the front of my mom's apartment building. Two

(01:24):
serious looking men got up and walked up to the stoop.
My mother, who was nearing her twelfth birthday, remembered praying
that it would be someone else's apartment door those men
would knock on, and felt terrible praying such a prayer.
She huddled near the door of her family's apartment, listening
to the footsteps as the men walked up the stairs.

(01:47):
Please not our floor, she prayed. Then the worst thing
they could have happened happened. The men stopped on her floor.
It was John, she told.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Me, crying.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
I knew it was John. Within moments, the two men
arrived at the door, followed by three knocks. She never
heard her mom cry so loud. It was more of
a whale. My mom told us. It was a sound
I never heard from her before or again. Her dad
barely cried, but my mom would never see him enjoy

(02:24):
his life fully again. He'd lost his only son, his bloodline,
his future. John, the uncle I never knew, is buried
at the US Military Cemetery in Saint Laurent, France. A
framed picture of that cemetery hangs on my office wall,
next to a framed purple heart citation. For me and

(02:47):
millions of Americans, Memorial Day is a sacred day. Yes,
it's also the extended weekend that kicks off the summer
with hot dogs and picnics too, but mornings on Memorial
Day were always about honoring those who paid the ultimate
sacrifice serving their country in uniform. The number of Americans

(03:12):
and American families like ours who paid that price is
well over a million. Lives lost. More than twenty five
thousand died fighting the Revolutionary War, thirty six thousand plus
in the Korean War, fifty eight thousand in the Vietnam War,
one hundred and sixteen thousand, World War One, four hundred
and five thousand in World War II, and an astounding

(03:35):
six hundred and twenty thousand in the Civil War. To date,
over seven thousand Americans have died in the Global War
on Terror. Memorial Day is more than a weekend of
fun and sun is so many millions of us. It's personal.
That's why it's about first and foremost visiting military cemeteries

(03:56):
and adorning grave sites with small American flags. Indeed, it
was General John A. Logan who started that tradition back
on May thirtieth, eighteen sixty eight, at Arlington National Cemetery,
where he and some volunteers decorated the graves of more
than twenty thousand Union and Confederate soldiers. In nineteen seventy one,

(04:17):
Decoration Day was renamed Memorial Day and became a national
holiday to honor all Americans who died serving their country
in times of war. In Andrew Carroll's remarkable book, War Letters,
Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars, his forward included a quote
from General William to come as a sherman in his

(04:39):
speech he gave in eighteen eighty there is many a
boy here today who looks on war as all glory.
The boys, it is all hell. You can bear this
warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon
war with horror. Carrol's book is filled with a remarkable

(05:01):
array of letters from soldiers to the home front. Many
were the last letters that those soldiers, sailors, and airmen
ever wrote to their loved ones.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Lieutenant Robert E. Mitchell wrote this to his.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Family on October sixth, nineteen eighteen. We're licking the tar
out of the Germans. The spirit of the boys is great,
and they're primming over with confidence. These are stirring times,
and regardless of my personal outcome, I'm glad to be
a part of it. Lieutenant Mitchell was killed a mere
nine days later. In a letter to his fiance Audrey Taylor.

(05:36):
On July sixth, nineteen forty four, Lieutenant Jack Emery wrote
these words, I like to sit up these warm, bright
nights and watch the white clouds and dark shadows move
in the night. That's when I miss you the most.
On the nights that I sit up alone, I can
feel you close to me. Sometimes we sit and talk.

(05:58):
Sometimes I pretend we're just sitting there with our arms
all about each other. Lieutenant Emory was shot down three
days later over Burma.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
One of the most.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Harrowing letters came from Lieutenant Tommy Kennedy, who was captured
and imprisoned on what came to be known as Japanese
hell ships in Manila Bay.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
He scribbled these words to.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
His parents, if I could only have been killed in action,
it's so useless to die here from dysentery with no medicine.
Bright Mary Robertson at Hutzdale Penn her son Melville died
of dysentery on the seventeenth of January. With his head
on my shoulders. We were like brothers. He was buried

(06:41):
at sea, somewhere off the China coast. I weigh about
ninety pounds now, so you can see how we are.
I will sign off now, darlings, Please don't grieve too much.
I'm not afraid to go, and we'll be waiting for you.
Lieutenant Kennedy's last letters were passed from one p O
W to another. When the final survivors were free to

(07:04):
war's end. Kennedy's parents finally received those letters. It had
been four years since their teenage son left for the Pacific.
Twenty five year old Second Lieutenant Jack Lundberg's note to
his mother, father, and family was written a few weeks
before D Day. It's what soldiers, airmen, and seamen call

(07:24):
their final letter, the last note to loved ones in
the event they don't return home from battle. I want
you to know how much I love each of you.
You mean everything to me. It's the realization of your love.
It gives me the courage to continue. After thanking them
for the sacrifices they made on his behalf, Lieutenant Lundberg

(07:47):
closed out his letter with these words, we of the
United States have something to fight for. Never more fully
have I realized that there's just no other country with
comparable wealth and advancement or standard of living.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
The USA is worth a sacrifice.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Remember always that I love each of you most fervently,
and I am proud of you.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Consider Mary, my wife, as.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
Having taken my place in the family circle, and watch
over each other.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Love to my family, Jack.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
Two and a half weeks after D Day, Lieutenant Lundberg
was the lead navigator on a B seventeen mission to
bomb the railroads in a small town in France. Hit
by German anti aircraft rounds, Bunburgh's plane crashed. His body
wasn't recovered until nine months after his death. In a

(08:39):
letter to his mother on September sixth, nineteen fifty, Private
William Bury wrote, I'm in a fox hole writing this letter.
Still here on the front line, I pray every night.
How is the family getting along? Fine? I hope well.
I spent my birthday here. I'm on a machine gun.
I haven't slept for six days. I will who hoping

(09:00):
to hear from you soon, your loving son Bill. He
died a few weeks later, not long after his twenty
second birthday, an early casualty of the Korean War. Carol's
book is filled with letters like these, as well as
letters from American family such as mine, who lost a
loved one to one of our nation's wars. We families

(09:22):
cherished those letters, medals, and photographs that were left behind.
They're an enduring memory of a life that could have been,
of graduations and weddings, in the birth of children missed,
and of lives lost. Preserving all the things we Americans
love and that we all too often take for granted.
That's why Memorial Day matters to so many of us.

(09:45):
It's also why it should matter to all of us.
My personal story Memorial Day and what it means to
me here on our American stories, I no