From Sandi Dean Burgess – September 22, 2024
Sergeant Charles (Chuck) W. Hunter, a young man from Tillamook, Oregon, died 79 years ago today. He survived WW2, only to die on a supply mission one month later. He never got to come home. I was excited to get permission from Karen to share her blogs about Chuck with the Tillamook County coastal and military veteran pages I help with on Facebook. My appreciation, Karen!
Chuck’s beloved parents and sister are gone now as are all but a very few of his peers. He didn’t get a chance to marry and so doesn’t have any descendants. So, Karen and Kim are writing his legacy. The book will be a tribute to Chuck, of course, but also to the thousands of others who died in wars in the military service of our country. Many are now no more than an old photo in a family album from years gone by. Many of their names are no longer known by the generations who have followed.
The thousands and thousands of grave and internment sites across the U.S. show what a huge price was paid for the freedoms we have today. We need to never forget those who paid that price – with their service, their mental health, with physical injuries and many with their lives.
Epilogue:
by Karen Krantweiss Nudelman
In March of 2016, my family and I made a trip cross country to Northern California. We took a day trip to San Bruno, California, to visit the grave of a young man who died before he could ever enjoy the future he had planned for himself.
The Golden Gate National Cemetery was open to visitors when we arrived, but it seemed to be only us and the groundkeeper’s crew. The sounds of their lawn mowers hummed loudly behind us as we drove to plot J, as indicated on the Graves registration card. We knew the number of Chuck’s grave, but there were no signs or maps indicating placement. My husband dropped me off in the J section so he could go to look for a map or some assistance, leaving me to walk up and down the rows, touching headstones and reading each name. It was a sea of endless identical stones on either side of me.
The only thing separating the rows was an enormous, beautiful tree, with weeping boughs so long that they almost touched the ground.
It suddenly occurred to me that behind the names, on the back of the gravestones, might reveal a clue to their order. That was indeed the case. The number I was looking for was 984. The one I touched was in the 500s. Row by row, I inspected only the rough unpolished backs of the markers looking for the 900s. I walked deliberately behind each stone and counted them down until I saw 984. At that point, I looked up and saw my husband Scott and motioned him toward me.
Quietly with reverence I said, “I found him.”
I dropped to my knees and laid one hand on the grassy plot to steady myself. I was trembling. My free hand touched the surface I had only seen as a photo on the Find a Grave website. I traced his name and shook my head as I noticed the unmistakable error –his death date read September 25, 1945. The plane crashed on September 22. The remains were discovered on the 25th. I wondered again to myself why it was never corrected.
“Hi Chuck. It’s good to finally be with you.”
Nearby were holders for flowers with stakes attached. I grabbed one and pierced his plot with it, and gently arranged the flowers my daughter had picked out. I stood up to see if I liked the symmetry of the bouquet, but instead I noticed something I felt was more significant. There were no flowers on any grave in front of me, or on either side. I peered down the rows. I slowly turned around and took in a 360-degree view of the thousands of identical graves.
I could not find one single flower anywhere. It was a pristine place. Impeccably kept. As if the blades of freshly cut grass stood at attention, waiting to be crushed by loved ones coming to visit the fallen. I stood there, alongside my husband, alone in what felt like the cemetery of the unknown soldiers. Many of the graves were of young men like Chuck. In fact, Chuck’s row was mostly made up of twenty-one-year-olds. They presumably never had children. Their loved ones have long since passed away.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
From the poem, For the Fallen, by Laurence Binyon