Soldiers we're supposed to forget

My family tree is riddled with soldiers, so Memorial Day holds deep and varied meanings for me. My earliest documented fighting ancestor decided he didn't want to live under British rule and so signed up to be an American patriot in time for the Revolutionary War. My most recent military relatives include a cousin who spent much of 2007-08 at an airbase outside of Baghdad and another who currently serves in the tarpit known as Afghanistan.

In between my revolutionary great-great-great-great-great grandfather and my cousins there is a whole host of other fighting men I'm proud to claim as my own.

My father's three older brothers each served their time during WWII, one in airplanes over Europe, another on the ground at the infamous Battle of the Bulge, and one in the Pacific. My dad was drafted during the Korean War, doing his time stateside but doing it nonetheless. My mother's brother served in the Navy, and his son is the one who went to Iraq.

Further back in time, though, are the Confederates, the men who took up arms against the North during the Civil War. They had no way to know they were destined to become part of a national identity crisis that some believe will begin to abate now that a black president has been elected.

My great-great grandfather could never have predicted that his descendents would be asked to bury his memory alongside his bones and thereafter speak of him only in hushed, apologetic tones.

Veterans groups nationwide cringe at the thought of including Confederate representation in their parades and commemorations and, indeed, some have banned them altogether. The Politically Correct Among Us are all too happy to protest any symbolism associated with Civil War soldiers from the South, so the pressure to keep things nice and comfy is huge.

Confederates go largely unnoticed by all but a handful of dedicated genealogists, Civil War buffs, and people like me who owe their very existence to the fact that at least some southern soldiers made it back alive.

None of the the men in my family who fought for the South in the years 1861-65 owned slaves. Not a one. They were fathers, brothers, sons, farmers, shopkeepers, several of them were dirt-poor and there was only one with any college education.

Two families each sent three sons to war. One family got all theirs back. The other family lost two.

The surviving son, John Stephens, made it back to Arkansas where he married, had twelve children, and became in time a banker and respected member of his community. One of his daughters taught first grade for 50 years, helped care for her infirm and aging older siblings, believed in God with a quiet tenacity, and raised a child in spite of an alcoholic husband whom she quickly summoned the courage to divorce. That child was my grandmother and she used to tell me stories about her grandparents and their hardships after the war during Reconstruction.

John's two brothers died far from home. The one buried in Macon, Ga. has a tombstone with his last name misspelled. The other, blown to pieces by a cannonball during the Battle of Vicksburg, was never buried because there wasn't much left, my grandmother said.

Another Confederate ancestor was only 16 when he was wounded in battle and piled atop a wagon to be taken to a prisoner of war hospital near Citronelle, Al. He was eventually released and made it home to Arkansas minus an arm.

There are others in my family, but these give a glimpse into the lives and sacrifices of the soldiers we're all supposed to forget.

What I can't forget, and what I won't let my children forget, either, is that these Civil War kin had names. They were someone's son, brother, husband, father, friend. They fought a war without penicillin, clean clothes, armored tanks, anesthesia, night-vision goggles, automatic rifles, the internet, bottled water, USO shows, MREs, or Chapstick and Off!.

I'm proud of them for doing what they thought was right at the time, for having the courage of their convictions and for enduring unimaginable pain and suffering in defense of their "country."

Some of you reading this will not agree. You'll say the southern soldiers deserved every hardship that came their way. You'll want to vilify them for supporting slavery because you'll have not read your history books to know their cause was nowhere near that simple.

But in our family, on this 'blog, on this day, we remember with love and gratitude John H. Stephens, Benjamin F. Stephens, William G. Stephens, Thomas Hamby, Elijah T. Wells, John Blevins, William Blevins, and Hugh A. Blevins, Jr.

They, too, were America's sons. Part of her family. Part of mine.