Scott Air Force Base leader shares Memorial Day message in Belleville ceremony
For Col. Raymond Clydesdale, a staging area for wounded troops at an air base in Iraq provided him with a message he wanted to share Monday during his Memorial Day address to remember U.S. military members who died in service to their country.
Clydesdale, who is now the commander of the 375th Medical Group at Scott Air Force Base, was serving as an Air Force doctor during what is known as “the surge” in troops deployed in Iraq in 2007.
He told the audience at the Belleville Memorial Day Ceremony at Walnut Hill Cemetery that wounded service members at the Balad Air Base in Iraq had a rec room in a contingency air medical staging area at the base. They would have to wait in this area for up to 72 hours before being transferred home.
And as Clydesdale treated patients there, he saw something in the rec room that was seared into his memory.
“There was drywall,” he said. “It was not a permanent facility. But etched on the drywall were remembrances and memorials to the fallen. Some of their comrades who had fallen. So they would write in, ‘rest in peace’ to one of their comrades that died. And this was scrolled throughout all of the drywall in the rec room.”
During one his shifts there, Clydesdale also saw a message he still remembers: “We the forgotten, do the unforgivable for the ungrateful.”
Clydesdale said he’s heard of other similar phrases that troops use as they have “raw” memories of losing comrades in the previous 24 or 48 hours.
“That drywall for me,” he said before a long pause. “That drywall was the best memorial that I’ve ever seen or likely will ever see.”
The Belleville Memorial Day Parade was conducted before the ceremony at Walnut Hill Cemetery, which is at 1101 Mascoutah Ave. on the east side of Belleville. Marchers started on North Third Street and the route ended at Walnut Hill.
Elsewhere in the metro-east, Memorial Day services had been scheduled in Dupo at the American Legion Prairie Du Pont Post 485, the Fairview Heights City Hall and at the O’Fallon Veterans Monument.
