Today is Memorial Day. Start of summer, etc. Maybe/maybe not think about those who've served. I've had plenty to say about Memorial Day over the years, and here's snippet from each of those posts.
Decoration Day (2007)
Today I will think of those who were not as lucky as Jake Wolf [my grandfather; saw combat on the other side in WWI] and Al Rogers [my father, four years in the Navy during WWII; never saw combat], those who did not make it home to build their lives.
Six Degrees of Separation from the Military (2008)
How much easier it is to "live" with a war that doesn't have any direct impact on you or anyone you know, or even know of, except remotely.
Just something to think about on Memorial Day.
I've always loved Memorial Day, one of those pleasant but low-craziness holidays that we just don't get enough of.
After we had finished planting, we strolled around the graveyard, which is small (it’s a parish, not a diocesan, cemetery) and, in our case, quite family oriented. We walked by the graves of lots of friends and relatives – close cousins we knew, distance relations we knew of, the family who lived in my grandmother’s decker – and noted how many of the graves were – this being Decoration Day – decorated with flags, put out by the American Legion or the VFW, in holders that indicate the war that someone served in.
This year, Memorial Day has special resonance, in that we observe the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which begat Decoration Day, which begat the latter day Memorial Day.
Memorial Day 2012: "It's Not About the Barbecue" (2012)
There are so many things that are bad for a country’s soul, and I’ve got to believe that having an all-volunteer military has got to be one of them – too much opportunity for sunshine patriots and chicken hawks to call the shots knowing they have no skin/no kin in the game.
It promises to be a brilliant spring day here in Boston, but as I write this it’s cold, dreary, drizzling – not atypical spring weather in these parts, and actually pretty fitting, when you think of it.
Sure, war is sometimes conducted on delightfully balmy days. But as often as not, those in battle are coping with terrible physical conditions.
It’s frostbitten feet at Valley Forge. It’s contending with the heat at the Battle of the Wilderness. Muck in the trenches of Château-Thierry. Rappelling up the cliff at Pointe du Hoc during a pelting rainstorm. The cold and ice at Choisin Reservoir. Monsoon season in Vietnam. Sandstorms in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This Memorial Day, I’m mostly thinking about the two dear ones I have lost since last Memorial Day: my husband Jim and my golden (50 years!) friend Marie.
Neither was a veteran.
Jim spent what would have been his soldiering years working as a chemist for a series of government agencies, including the CIA, in order to get draft deferments. (Hard to think of anyone less suited to the soldier’s life than my singular and peculiar husband. I always told him he would have been Section-Eighted out in the time it took his drill sergeant to yell “ten-hut”, or whatever it is that drill sergeants yell.) Like my father, Marie’s served in World War II, Bob as a Marine MP in the South Pacific (a precursor to his job as a Worcester cop).
Up the Republic! (2015)
This year, while I will keep up the tradition of thinking about veterans in general, and my dead loved ones in particular, my shout out this Memorial Day goes to The Republic of Ireland, which last Friday became the first country to approve gay marriage by popular vote. And that popular vote wasn’t close at all: 62.1% voted a resounding YES!
Tough to think of all those lives – mostly young men – lost to war. And I guess it doesn’t much matter whether it was a good war or a not so good war. (“My war’s better than your war!”) And it doesn’t much matter, either, whether you were a gung-ho patriot or a reluctant recruit, grousing all the way. At the end of the day, you didn’t get to live the full life you would have had if not for that good or not so good war. Sigh…
Broken Record and Then Some (2017)
Back in Boston, the flags are up on the Common,commemorating all of those from Massachusetts who
died in the service of our country, from the Revolutionary War on. A stirring sight, for sure. But I like this shot because it shows the carousel. Life goes on!
On this Memorial Day, here’s hoping that no one as crazy and amped up as the Robert Duvall character in Apocalypse Now amps us into yet another war.
...unlike 45% of Americans, at least I know that today is a holiday to commemorate our war dead. I don’t actually find that figure all that shocking. There are so many things that Americans are ignorant about, awareness of the purpose of Memorial Day is the least of it.
This year, there's another kind of war on. Maybe next year, we'll have flags for the coronavirus deaths.
I don't know that the words of the Roman poet Horace are necessarily always true. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. (It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.) There are plenty of bad causes that soldiers have died for. But the Civil War - so bloody, so ghastly - was, for the Union soldiers, a righteous one. The cynical may discount the role it played, but ending slavery was a noble purpose. And if we're still fighting that war today - and regrettably we are - then shame on us.
Lots to think about on this Memorial Day. There always is.
To quote the blogger: Lots to think about on this Memorial Day. There always is.
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