If You Are Able

If you able, save for them a place inside of you and save one backward glance as you are leaving for the places they can no longer go.

  Be not ashamed to say you loved them, though you may or may not have always.

 Take what they have left and what they have taught you with their dying and keep it with your own.

 And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind.

Major Michael Davis O'Donnell

1st January, 1970

Dak To, Vietnam

O’Donnell, a helicopter pilot, went Missing In Action on March 24, 1970, during a rescue attempt. His remains were returned in 1995, and identified in 2001.