Across the city on Memorial Day, Boston honors its fallen soldiers
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The American invasion of Iwo Jima had started eight days earlier, and Gunnery Sergeant William Gary Walsh was one of some 70,000 Marines who stormed the craggy little island off the coast of Japan during World War II.
The 22-year-old Boston native led his men through a relentless barrage of enemy gunfire up a steep and rugged slope. At the summit, while he and the other survivors from his platoon took cover in a small trench, a hand grenade landed in their midst. That’s when Walsh — in a remarkable act of self-sacrifice — flung his body on top of the bomb and absorbed the full force of the explosion.
“He jumped on a grenade to save his friends,” said Dan McLaughlin about Walsh’s final moments.
McLaughlin recounted this story of heroism to anyone who would listen at the Memorial Day wreath-laying ceremony Monday morning at the Dorchester park named in Walsh’s honor. The event was the first of a series of observances throughout Boston. Mayor Michelle Wu and Veterans Services Commissioner Robert Santiago joined a small group of spectators in remembering Walsh, who posthumously received the Medal of Honor for his actions at Iwo Jima, one of the bloodiest battles in Marine Corps history.
Wu, Santiago, and some of the attendees placed a green wreath with red, white, and blue flowers on a stand next to the stone monument bearing Walsh’s name. A dozen small American flags poked out of the ground, flapping in the light breeze.
McLaughlin said his father, Bill, was friends with Walsh; the two men played on a neighborhood baseball team together in Dorchester’s Cedar Grove neighborhood. Like Walsh, the elder McLaughlin served in World War II. McLaughlin said his father taught him the values of “duty, honor, and country,” and so, to honor him, keeps this annual Memorial Day tradition alive, even as the crowd of attendees grows smaller each passing year.
“I just come here out of a sense of purpose,” McLaughlin said, remembering the other men from the picture who were always in and out of his house when he was growing up.
Santiago, a Navy veteran, said in an interview afterward that it was “heartwarming” to see so many families had brought their children.
“These kids — they’re our flag bearers for the future,” he said, nodding toward one girl with a couple of American flags clutched tightly in her fist. “Literally.”
Later that morning, Santiago and several dozen people, including veterans and their families, paid their respects at the Gardens at Gethsemane Cemetery in West Roxbury. They sang patriotic tunes such as “God Bless America,” before a trumpeter bellowed “Taps.” A pair of riflemen performed a three-volley salute.
Speaking before the assembled crowd, Santiago said every military family serves along with their loved ones in uniform.
”I do remember my mom giving me the biggest hug and not letting go,” Santiago of when he enlisted and later deployed.
Cheryl Reid was among those who attended the West Roxbury event. She spent a quiet moment with her family afterward, huddled in front of a memorial for fallen soldiers. She thought of her brother, Paul Reid, buried just up the hill.
Marine Lance Corporal Paul Reid of West Roxbury was 19 when he was killed in the Vietnam War, her sister said. He liked to shoot pool and was known around town for his pigeon, Pudge, who sat on his shoulder.
“He loved animals,” she said of her brother, the first kid from the neighborhood to die in the war. “He wanted to be a veterinarian.”
A few miles north, in the South End, Wu, City Council President Ed Flynn, and Councilor Ruthzee Louijeune honored fallen Puerto Rican service members alongside members of the association that maintains the Puerto Rican Veterans Memorial. There, a bronze statue depicts a male and female solider above an engraving of the words, “La libertad no es gratis,” or “liberty is not free.”
In English and Spanish, speakers described the struggles of Puerto Rican soldiers, who, as the Spanish-speaking Wu put it, fought “en dos frentes,” or two fronts — on the battlefield for the United States and at home against discrimination.
“Regardless of what other people might think, we are US citizens,” said Boston police Deputy Superintendent Luis Cruz. “And we shed blood and lost soldiers for this country because we have an honor and integrity and the fact that we are Americans.”
Veterans from all walks of life said Memorial Day is complicated. As Isaias Sepulveda, one of the speakers at the event honoring Puerto Rican veterans, put it, “Memorial Day is a day of both grief and celebration.”
Marine Sergeant Antonio Molina, the president of the Puerto Rican Veterans Memorial Association — and survivor of sniper fire to the head in Vietnam — said “Boston should feel proud” of these annual efforts for Puerto Rican vets, who often get overlooked. Of Memorial Day, he said, “We’re honoring all those who gave their lives.”
Jaime Rodriguez, who addressed the crowd only in Spanish, added, “Este día, celebramos una fecha tan importante — de hombre y mujer salieron de sus barrios, salieron de sus pueblos, salieron de sus comunidades y vecindarios, para defender los intereses de los Estados Unidos.” That translates to: “We’re celebrating an important day. When men and women left their towns, neighborhoods, and communities to defend the interests of the US.”
“Entre ese proceso, muchos no llegaron como salieron,” he added. When soldiers returned, they didn’t arrive the way they’d left.
Flynn, also a Navy veteran, noted that for families of fallen soldiers, “every day is Memorial Day.”
“That pain never goes away,” he said. But, he said, it’s not theirs to bear alone.
“We all share it on Memorial Day.”