We watched the jet descend, cleared to land, Oxford, Mississippi, 0900 hours, 21 August 2008. When its wheels squeaked on the runway, I joined in the solemn crowd’s collective whisper: “Welcome home, Donnie.”
First Lieutenant Donnie Carwile, United States Army … home. In service of his country, the brave young soldier went into harm’s way and was killed in a faraway land.
Beneath Old Glory, billowing in the breeze against a blue sky, the jet rolled to a stop. Its engines shut down; all was silent.
When Donnie’s flag-draped coffin appeared in the plane’s cargo door, no dry eyes viewed it. I put my arm around Heidi, one of three beautiful daughters God gave me. I could only imagine how much Donnie’s two young daughters longed to feel their father’s loving touch.
In precise cadence, six beret-clad pallbearers, brothers-in-arms of the fallen soldier, marched with the coffin from the jet to a waiting hearse. Escorted by motorcycles, the procession pulled away. The onlookers dispersed. Their hero was home.
I remembered my two-year tour of overseas military duty. Like Donnie, I too returned to native soil, not to be laid to rest in it, as he would be, but to farm it.
That long-ago day, as I drove down the country road leading from the highway to the cotton plantation on which I had grown up, I saw a man standing beside it, mopping his brow in August heat.
Without a doubt, I knew who it was — Jaybird, the old black man whom I always mention with reverence, the man who watched over and mentored me in my youth, whose sometimes gentle, sometimes tough ways were instrumental in my boy-to-man development.
Tears streamed down his wrinkled old face as he beamed in pride at me in my army uniform. Crushing me in a bear hug, “Junior, Junior,” was all he could say.
Later, Mama told me that when Jaybird heard I was coming home, he stood beside the road awhile each day at sunup, peering down it. Alive and well, I came home to the beloved old man, to family, friends, and familiar surroundings.
In spirit only, Donnie came home. Grateful Americans witnessed his return, and mourned for this courageous defender of freedom, and for the wife and children he left behind.
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With all my heart, I believe that God has a special place in His heart for fallen heroes like Donnie Carwile. I believe he is now in God’s loving embrace, and that he and his family will reunite in the hereafter.
Until then, his broken-hearted survivors will visit his grave, pray, place flowers; they’ll do the things grieving survivors do. And they will miss him … every single day.
At the airport, veterans displayed a sign that read, “Stand down, First Lieutenant Donald C. Carwile. Your mission is complete.”
The poet Shakespeare once spoke a similar message:
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone….
Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled The Jaybird Tales.
Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).
