Returning Home: Capt. Michael “Scott” Speicher
In the ancient Spartan tradition, there were only two cases when burial markers were permitted: for warriors killed in battle and for women who died in childbirth. The memorials were simple stones, often without inscriptions.
When inscriptions were allowed, they were terse and succinct. The most famous Spartan epitaph—for the Three Hundred who fell defending the pass at Thermopylae—was composed by Simonides the poet, a non-Spartan. It is known today in every corner of the globe:
Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
that here obedient to their laws we lie.
What I love about this is it doesn’t even mention the battle. No mention of Persians, of Leonidas, of the date, the circumstances, the peril to Greece or to freedom. What is unspoken is more powerful than what is spoken. The other aspect that I believe makes these two verses so potent is the phrase “obedient to their laws.” Eulogies don’t get more understated that that, yet every Greek knew exactly how much valor, honor and sacrifice was contained in that lean, Spartan-like phrase.
Today, August 14, the remains of Navy Pilot Michael “Scott” Speicher will be buried.
Valor, honor and sacrifice are words that the family of Capt. Speicher knows well. We know that he was shot down on the first night of the Gulf War, 18 years ago. But little else is known. According to the Associated Press:
Defense officials originally declared Speicher killed in action hours after his plane was shot down over west-central Iraq. Then-Defense secretary Dick Cheney announced on television that Speicher was the first casualty of the Gulf War.
Ten years after the crash, the Navy changed Speicher’s status to missing in action, citing an absence of evidence that Speicher had died. In October 2002, the Navy switched his status to “missing/captured,” although it has never said what evidence it had that he may have been in captivity.
Over the years, critics contended the Navy had not done enough, particularly right after the crash, to search for the 33-year-old pilot.
The military recovered bones and multiple skeletal fragments, and Speicher was identified by matching a jawbone and dental records and later by DNA reference samples from family members.
We don’t know the unspoken story, but we know it is a powerful one. Though many of us are strangers passing by, we pay tribute to the valor, honor, and sacrifice of the Soldiers, Marines, and to the families of all those who have fallen “obedient to our laws.”
Capt. Speicher was the only American missing in action from the first Gulf War. There are still thousands of Americans missing in action, dating back to WWII. You can learn more about those missing by visiting these links:
Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office
DO THE WORK
Steve shows you the predictable Resistance points that every writer hits in a work-in-progress and then shows you how to deal with each one of these sticking points. This book shows you how to keep going with your work.
THE AUTHENTIC SWING
A short book about the writing of a first novel: for Steve, The Legend of Bagger Vance. Having failed with three earlier attempts at novels, here's how Steve finally succeeded.
NOBODY WANTS TO READ YOUR SH*T
Steve shares his "lessons learned" from the trenches of the five different writing careers—advertising, screenwriting, fiction, nonfiction, and self-help. This is tradecraft. An MFA in Writing in 197 pages.
TURNING PRO
Amateurs have amateur habits. Pros have pro habits. When we turn pro, we give up the comfortable life but we find our power. Steve answers the question, "How do we overcome Resistance?"
I’m glad they could finally bring Capt. Speicher’s remains back to his family. I have been following this story since I read a book on the subject, No One Left Behind: The Lt. Comdr. Michael Scott Speicher Story by Amy Waters Yarsinske two years ago. Then I read everything I could find online. It’s good for his family to have closure. Also, it’s good for other servicemembers to know that their country will work to bring everyone back home.
I remember the several episodes in Capt. Speicher’s story; the last was right after the Iraq invasion and pursued whether he had been captured and held by Saddam for years.
I had just watched the film “Taking Chance”, about the final journey home for burial of a 20 year-old Marine killed in Iraq in ’04; from the story written by the Lt. Col. who was his escort; the evening before seeing Capt. Speisher’s return to Florida on CNN. That made the scene in FL doubly poignant.