Dr. Weir,
As a military family we try to prepare ourselves for a letter like yours; and while we prayed for the safe return of our son, God had other plans and we must trust in that. It is good to know he thought of us often and that he was liked and respected by those he worked with. I would not have wanted his last days to be spent in loneliness and isolation, though I have no doubt he would have faced that with equal fortitude.
We do understand you cannot tell us more. It is ever the fate of military families. But you have told us enough. That he remained the loving son we knew, as well as coming into his potential before he died as the brave young man we knew he would always become.
You said you did not know my son as well as you could have. I have enclosed a poem that he had taped to his bedroom wall. Maybe it will help you know him a little better.
Sincerely,
Colonel and Mrs. Tom Andrews
The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses:
who has not heard them?
They have a silence that speaks for them at night
and when the clock counts.
They say: We were young. We have died.
Remember us.
They say: We have done what we could
but until it is finished it is not done.
They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished
no one can know what our lives gave.
They say: Our deaths are not ours: they are yours,
they will mean what you make them.
They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for
peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say,
it is you who must say this.
We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.
We were young, they say. We have died; remember us.
Archibald MacLeish
1892-1982