Memorial Day: making up for the guilt that I feel
Monday Ministerial Musings
By Rev. Mark William Ennis
2024 Blog #21
May 26, 2025
Memorial Day: making up for the guilt that I feel
For several years, my Memorial Day blog has been about the guilt I feel for my Godfather’s death during the summer of 1980. My Godfather, Uncle Kenny, was a member of the construction battalion, “Sea Bees,” during World War II. Among other places, he spent much of his naval career on Guam Island, building Quonset huts for the military. Having been in the oil burner business before the war, he also constructed steam boilers to run autoclaves for field hospitals there. Life on the Island of Guam, gave him memories that he never recovered from. In today’s language, we would call it PTSD, but at the time it was called, “shell shock.”
His PTSD came from the constant fear that he lived with on that island. He told me that the military had declared the island “secure” but there were a number of raids against the American bases by groups of Japanese soldiers long after that declaration. He also told me that for months after the island was considered safe, Japanese snipers continued to terrorize the American forces.
Guam island was taken over by the American forces one year before the war in the Pacific ended. During that year, the Sea Bees performed construction projects and also trained to be part of the invasion of Japan. My Godfather’s unit was to be part of that invasion. The plan was that when we invaded Japan, and our forces pushed one thousand yards up the beach, his unit was to land and construct a steam boiler to use in a field hospital that was to be placed on the beach in mainland Japan.
The thought of this invasion, and the constant stress from the Japanese snipers, played on my Godfather’s mind. Ultimately, he had a mental breakdown and spent the final months of the ward in Walter Reed Army Hospital. He never fully recovered from this breakdown.
He functioned for the next decades installing furnaces in newly constructed homes, but to him, the world had become a place to be feared, not embraced. To cover his pain, he frequently went on drinking binges and became an expert in astrology. He believed that fate determined our futures and there was nothing anyone of us could do about it.
For reasons that I do not know, by the 1970’s his depression became worse, and his alcohol consumption increased. He essentially became a recluse, with bad memories to keep him company. He committed suicide during the summer of 1980. I still wonder to this day, if I could have done more for him. That summer, I was a new college graduate and was newly engaged. I got too busy with my life and neglected spending time with him. That guilt haunts me to this day.
Today, I will be participating with a Memorial Day event at a local Veterans Hospital on behalf of the hospice organization where I work as a chaplain. Perhaps by being present for these veterans who are often depressed and chemically dependent, I can begin to make up the debt that I feel that I owe to Uncle Kenny. I pray that God will bless me on this quest to make up for the neglect that I showed in 1980.