Matthew Conley was a natural leader at Rogers High School in Greenhill, Ala. "You remember any time we see a kid show the type of determination that Matt did," says principal Tim Tubbs.
Dress Blues
By Jason Isbell
From Sirens of the DitchWhat can you see from
your window?
I can't see anything from mine.
Flags on the side
of the highway
And scripture on grocery store signs.
Maybe eighteen was
too early.
Maybe thirty or forty is too.
Did you get your
chance to make peace with the man
Before he sent down his angels
for you?
Mamas and grandmamas
love you
'Cause that's all they know how to do.
You never
planned on the bombs in the sand
Your wife said this
all would be funny
When you came back home in a week.
You'd
turn twenty-two and we'd celebrate you
In a bar or a tent by the
creek.
Your baby would
just about be here.
Your very last tour would be up
But you
won't be back. They're all dressing in black
Drinking sweet tea
in styrofoam cups.
Mamas and grandmamas
love you.
American boys hate to lose.
You never planned on the
bombs in the sand
Or sleeping in your dress blues.
Now the high school
gymnasium's ready,
Full of flowers and old legionnaires.
Nobody
showed up to protest,
Just sniffle and stare.
But there's red,
white, and blue in the rafters
And there's silent old men from
the corps.
What did they say when they shipped you away
To
fight somebody's Hollywood war?
Nobody here could
forget you.
You showed us what we had to lose.
You never
planned on the bombs in the sand
Or sleeping in your dress blues.
No, no you never
planned on the bombs in the sand
Or sleeping in your dress blues.
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Jason Isbell is a phenomenal American singer-songwriter. He and his group, The 400 Unit, have won numerous awards in the field of Americana and country music. In addition, Isbell has won four Grammy awards including Best American Roots Song “24 Frames” (2016) and “If We Were Vampires” (2018) plus Best Americana Album for Something More Than Free (2016) and The Nashville Sound (2018)
Isbell's “Dress Blues” is just one of his outstanding works. Listening to the song, I thought about the debt we owe our brave men and women in the Armed Forces. This song relates a story of one Marine who gave the full measure. I wanted to share the meaningful song with you and encourage you to listen to Isbell.
The term “dress blues” describes an armed forces dress uniform for formal occasions. Dress blue uniforms are still authorized for funerals and memorial services, as well as for weddings, Toys for Tots events and the annual Marine Corps birthday celebration. Considered the most distinctive of all U.S. military uniforms, Marine dress blues are symbolic of the fighting corp.
The U.S. Marine Corps explains the significance of dress blues …
“There are common threads woven in the flag of our Nation and the dress blue uniform of our Marines. Sewn from the ideals America stands for and the resolve our Marines fight with, this is the only uniform in the U.S. military designated to include the red, white, and blue colors of the American flag. The distinctive dress blue uniform Marines wear represents the values Marines live, and has origins dating back to the American Revolution. Dress blues are worn for many events, including ceremonies with foreign officials, visits with U.S. civil officials, and formal social functions attended in an official capacity. Wherever Marines wear this uniform, they do so proudly, standing united as the moral fiber that forms the fabric of our Nation.”
(“Marine Corps Uniforms & Symbols: HISTORY AND PURPOSE IN EVERY SYMBOL. United States Marine Corps.)
The U.S. Congress took 7 days after the 9/11 attacks to deliberate on and authorize the war to destroy al-Qaida, remove the Taliban from power and remake the nation. On September 18, 2001, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 420-1 and the Senate 98-0 to authorize the United States to go to war, not just in Afghanistan, but in an open-ended commitment against “those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.” U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee of California cast the only vote opposed to the war.
The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in late 2001.
At 7,262 days from the first attack on Afghanistan to the final troop pullout, Afghanistan is said to be the U.S.‘s longest war. (Of course, the Korean War is still officially in progress.)
The global war on terror was not confined to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. now has counterterrorism operations in 85 countries.
(Neta C. Crawford. “Calculating the costs of the Afghanistan War in lives, dollars and years.” The Conversation. September 1, 2021.)
Neta C. Crawford – Professor of Political Science and Department Chair at Boston University and co-director of the Costs of War Project based at Brown University – reports …
“In all, 2,455 U.S. service members were killed in the Afghanistan War. The figure includes 13 U.S. troops who were killed by ISIS-K in the Kabul airport attack on August 26, 2021.
“U.S. deaths in Operation Enduring Freedom also include 130 service members who died in other locations besides Afghanistan, including Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Yemen …
“Of the veterans who were injured and lost a limb in the post-9/11 wars, many lost more than one. According to Dr. Paul Pasquina of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, of these veterans, 'About 40% to 60% also sustained a brain injury. Because of some of the lessons learned and the innovations that have taken place on the battlefield … we were taking care of service members who in previous conflicts would have died.'
“In fact, because of advances in trauma care, more than 90% of all soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq who were injured in the field survived. Many of the seriously injured survived wounds that in the past might have killed them.”
(Neta C. Crawford. “Calculating the costs of the Afghanistan War in lives, dollars and years.” The Conversation. September 1, 2021.)
We must take the time to remember and honor the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our armed forces. However, in the process of recalling those who have fallen in the line of duty, it’s only natural to question the wisdom and necessity of conflicts and wars that took them away from us in the first place.
How did Isbell's song originate? It is about a skinny high school quarterback who became a muscled Marine. Matt Conley was a boy who grew up without much but appreciated everything. His parents live in a double-wide trailer and they love their children ... and they were happy.
"Matthew's enlistment came out of the blue. His wife Nicole was at home watching the movie Ali with her sister. The phone rang. It was Matthew.
"'Hey,' he told Nicole. 'I think I'm gonna join the Marine Corps.'
"She sat up. They'd just toured Alabama-Birmingham together, talking about college, about going to the same place. Matthew had graduated with honors from Rogers in 2002. 'Why?'
"His parents didn't have the money for college, Matthew said, and he didn't want to be burdened by loans.
"'I never figured out what on earth possessed that boy to walk into the recruiter's office,' she says now.
"His parents tell of his urge to serve. That was certainly true. The terrorist attacks in New York disturbed him, his friends remember. Coach Beavers, who served in the Army, talked enlisting over with his star quarterback. 'He thought it would be a good way to get college paid for,' Beavers says."
(Wright Thompson. "Bedtime Stories For Catherine." ESPN.)
Isbell's Song
Jason Isbell's song “Dress Blues” from the 2007 album Sirens Of The Ditch, both honors and questions such a death. Jim Beviglia of American Songwriter provides the inspiration for Isbell's touching song …
“Isbell wrote the song after hearing about the death of Marine Cpl. Matthew D. Conley, who was killed at age 21 in Iraq in February 2006 along with 2nd Lt. Almar L. Fitzgerald when their Humvee rode over an improvised explosive device.
At the time of his death, Conley, who had been a football star at a Greenhill, Alabama, high school (Rogers High School) Isbell attended, was scheduled to go home in a matter of weeks to be reunited with his wife Nicole, who was pregnant at the time with their first child.
(Family and friends were planning a belated celebration for his Feb. 26 birthday and were going to have a baby shower for him and his wife, Nicole, who is expecting their first child in March.)
“'I knew Matt Conley not very well, he was a few years younger,' Isbell explained to Uncut magazine in 2014. “I was coming off a tour with the (Drive-By) Truckers, and I called my mom and she told me about his funeral, which she’d attended that day, and when I got home I wrote ‘Dress Blues’ in a time it takes to write it down on a piece of paper.'”
(Jim Beviglia. “Behind The Song: 'Dress Blues' by Jason Isbell.” American Songwriter. December 14, 2020.)
(Please read this article about Matt Conley from ESPN. Click here: http://www.espn.com/espn/eticket/story?page=conley.)
"Someday, Nicole will tell Catherine about the night two Marines and a Navy chaplain came to Tommy and Debbie's trailer. (Matt's parents.) It was 4:30 in the morning, and it was freezing outside. Tommy was snoring on the couch a few feet from the door, and the knocking startled him. Debbie heard it from the bedroom. They opened the door together, squinting into the glare of a strange vehicle's headlights. That's when they saw the uniforms.
"'They're here to tell us Matthew's dead,' Debbie blurted.
"Tommy didn't believe it. Not his little boy. Not the one he'd taken to see Hulk Hogan and coached in Little League. Please, God, not Matthew. 'Are you sure?' he asked."
(Wright Thompson. "Bedtime Stories For Catherine." ESPN.)
“Dress Blues” segues between scenes from the hometown funeral procession held for Conley and the hypothetical scenes of his reunion with his family and friends that would have taken place in a fairer world. Local color brings these scenes alive and creates realism of Conley's home in Florence, Alabama.
To end the song, Isbell's final question: “What did they say when they shipped you away/ To fight somebody’s Hollywood war?” could have been omitted to make the song a tribute without reflection similar to Billy Cyrus's famous song “Some Gave All” (1992) written after a real-life encounter with Vietnam veteran Sandy Kane.
But Isbell chose to make the song a reflection on war itself. The final chorus emphasizes the unspeakable cost: “Nobody here could forget you/ You showed us what we had to lose/ You never planned on those bombs in the sand/ Or sleeping in your dress blues.”
(Jim Beviglia. “Behind The Song: 'Dress Blues' by Jason Isbell.” American Songwriter. December 14, 2020.)
The song is a delicate balance of respect and honor with “dress blues” as a symbol both of America's true heroes and the ultimate sacrifice of war. To me, it speaks of our veterans with a voice stronger and truer than Cyrus's “Some Gave All” or Lee Greenwood's well-worn “God Bless the U.S.A.”
Postscript
To end this entry, I want to include a segment of James Dao's “Last Inspection: Precise Ritual of Dressing Nation’s War Dead.” (2013). Dao is Metro Editor of The New York Times. His column that day was about the Dover Port Mortuary where almost every one of the remains of American service members who died in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan were shipped.
The intimate details of the process of receiving the dead have been kept from public view. But, the Air Force, which oversees the mortuary, allowed this reporter and a photographer to observe the assembling of dress uniforms for those who have died. Dao calls his report “a small slice of the process, to be sure, but enough to appreciate the careful ritual that attends the war dead of the United States military … and enough to glimpse the arc of two long wars.”
During the peak of fighting in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, 10 to 20 bodies arrived here each day, and embalmers often worked all night to get remains home on time.
(James Dao. “Last Inspection: Precise Ritual of Dressing Nation’s War Dead.” The New York Times. May 25, 2013.)
Here is the excerpt. But, please read the entire article by clicking here: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/us/intricate-rituals-for-fallen-americans-troops.html.
“'It’s more than an honor,' Sergeant Deynes said. 'It’s a blessing to dress that soldier for the last time.'
“The soldier bent to his work, careful as a diamond cutter. He carried no weapon or rucksack, just a small plastic ruler, which he used to align a name plate, just so, atop the breast pocket of an Army dress blue jacket, size 39R.
“'Blanchard,' the plate read.
“Capt. Aaron R. Blanchard, a 32-year-old Army pilot, had been in Afghanistan for only a few days when an enemy rocket killed him and another soldier last month as they dashed toward their helicopter. Now he was heading home.
“But before he left the mortuary here, he would need to be properly dressed. And so Staff Sgt. Miguel Deynes labored meticulously, almost lovingly, over every crease and fold, every ribbon and badge, of the dress uniform that would clothe Captain Blanchard in his final resting place …
“Work on Captain Blanchard’s uniform began the morning after his body arrived at Dover, in a room lined with wood closets and walls hung thick with military accouterments. There, Sergeant Deynes, guided by the captain’s official military record, began assembling the dozens of badges, medals, unit patches and ribbons that would go on the dress jacket.
“Purple, orange and gold captains’ bars, denoting an aviator. Purple Heart. Overseas Service Badge. Sergeant Deynes searched along the walls and in tiny plastic drawers for each. Then he assembled the ribbons denoting the captain’s awards in the proper order according to precedence: a Bronze Star, his highest medal, went on the top, and the others followed like the words on a page.
“When finished, he slipped them onto a metal “ribbon rack” and pinned it above the jacket’s left breast pocket. Then he took a photograph to be sent to Army personnel headquarters at Fort Knox for double checking. The process has to be '100 percent perfect,' said William Zwicharowski, the Dover Port Mortuary branch chief, because 'a lot of times, families are in denial and they want to find something that gives them hope that it wasn’t their son or daughter.'
“Cpl. Landon L. Beaty, the Marine Corps liaison, recalled receiving a hard lesson in uniform assemblage when he first came to the mortuary last year. After inspecting a Marine’s uniform for loose threads, he thought he had found every one – until his boss found 73 more. Corporal Beaty voluntarily did three push-ups for each missed thread.
“Working so intimately with the dead can take a toll, so the mortuary has a large gym and a recreation room where workers are encouraged to blow off steam. A team of chaplains and mental health advisers are available for counseling.
“Sergeant Deynes began putting the final touches on Captain Blanchard’s uniform immediately after it returned from the base tailor, who had attached captain’s bars onto the jacket shoulders and purple and gold aviator braids onto the sleeves – three inches above the bottom, to be exact. The sergeant starched and pressed a white shirt, ironed a crease into the pants, steamed wrinkles out of the jacket and then rolled a lint remover over all of it, twice.
“Gently, he laid the pieces onto a padded table. Black socks protruded from the pants and white gloves from the sleeves. The funeral would be a closed coffin, but it all still had to look right.
“'They are not going to see it,' he said. 'I do it for myself.'
“A week later, Captain Blanchard’s remains were flown to his home state, Washington, where he was buried in a military cemetery near Spokane.
“His mother, Laura Schactler, said Captain Blanchard enlisted in the Marines after high school and served two tours in Iraq before marrying and returning home to attend college on an Army R.O.T.C. scholarship. After graduating, he learned to fly Apache attack helicopters, fulfilling a boyhood dream.
“Before his funeral, Ms. Schactler spent time alone with her son but did not open his coffin. But later that night, she said, her husband and two other sons did, wanting to say one last farewell.
“Inside, they saw a uniform, white gloves crossed, buttons gleaming, perfect in every detail.”
(James Dao. “Last Inspection: Precise Ritual of Dressing Nation’s War Dead.” The New York Times. May 25, 2013.)
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