Every day is Memorial Day
Republished from 2016;
The other day, my friend, Matt Burden, wrote on Facebook that this weekend should absolutely include barbecues and picnics because that’s how our fallen warriors would want us to spend a weekend remembering them – that we can push all of the worries in the world to the side because of their sacrifice. His point was that we don’t need to visit graves, plant flags and flowers in veterans’ cemeteries to honor their last full measure of devotion. All we need to do is live a life worthy of their sacrifice, and the sacrifice of their families.
Most of those warriors would be embarrassed by the attention, well, I know I would. But then, I’m embarrassed when someone thanks me for my service. It’s not that I’m not grateful for their verbal expression of gratitude, it’s just that I never know what to say. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of every one of my friends and soldiers who have been lost because of their service to the American people. In my mind, what I’ve done doesn’t even approach that which they’ve done for this country and I honor their memory by living a life that they would consider worth what they gave to us.
In that regard, every day is Memorial Day for me. I don’t need to visit Arlington Cemetery and stand among the headstones. Everyday, I stand among the headstones in my mind.
Mostly, those warriors who went on before us, just want you to enjoy the life that they helped secure for you. Enjoying the time that you spend with your family and friends, doing the things with your life that make you smile is honoring the sacrifices that were made for you. I think “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” were all mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.
It’s not what you do one day out of the year that honors veterans, it’s what you do the other 364 days. It’s not the “thank you for your service” that matters, it’s what you say to me before you know that I’m a veteran.
So I hope you have an honorable Memorial Day weekend.
Category: We Remember
VERY well said and soon I will do like a Brother I lost in A-stan said , “If I don’t make it, have a drink and a good cigar in my remembrance.”, I shall do that very soon Brother, in Honor of you and the others we lost, and this shall be my Toast:
“Until Valhalla My Brothers, where we shall reunite and drink Mead from the skulls of our slain enemies.”
If the name Ernie Pyle means little or nothing to you or, more likely, your family members, reading a few of his pieces this day is something I recommend. Pyle was a sailor in WWI. He joined the reserve at 17 and spent three months active duty. When the next war came, he was a civilian, a war correspondent, and he quickly became the most famous war correspondent of all. He slogged through the mud with the infantry in Europe, suffered their deprivations, and, agonized with them. He looked much more like a man in his 60s than his 40s. After a time, he came to hurt from what he called combat neurosis. His most well known piece, one that resulted in a Pulitizer was terribly brief and entitled, simply, “The Death of Captain Waskow.” A few lines of it are below. When the European Theatre war ended, Pyle, an infantryman through and through, joined the Navy in the Pacific. He died there, a bullet from a Japanese machine gun had taken him quickly. He was widely mourned by America, but most especially by the grunts he so loved. “This one is Captain Waskow,” one of them said quietly. Two men unlashed his body from the mule and lifted it off and laid it in the shadow beside the low stone wall. Other men took the other bodies off. Finally there were five lying end to end in a long row, alongside the road. You don’t cover up dead men in the combat zone. They just lie there in the shadows until somebody else comes after them. The unburdened mules moved off to their olive orchard. The men in the road seemed reluctant to leave. They stood around, and gradually one by one I could sense them moving close to Capt. Waskow’s body. Not so much to look, I think, as to say something in finality to him, and to themselves. I stood close by and I could hear. One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud, “God damn it.” That’s all he said, and then he… Read more »
It’s hard to find something written about Ernest Hemingway that doesn’t tout his time as a war correspondent. Hemingway wrote about liberated Paris and how romantic and momentous it was. I read one of his books in high school, and got the impression from reading it that its author was a self-absorbed asshole. And sure enough, every account I have found of GIs who crossed paths with Hemingway confirms that in person he was an absolute prick who considered the fighting men beneath him. He “reported” on the war safely back from the front, making sure he never went far enough forward to jeopardize the ready availability of alcohol, prostitutes, running water, and clean beds, and he looked down his nose at the men who didn’t have such luxuries assured.
Ernie Pyle gets far less attention today, but the troops loved him. He was the original “embedded reporter,” who lived in a fighting position, ate dirt-covered K-rats, and dodged bullets and shrapnel with the men he wrote about. He knew what it was like to have to separate the liner and steel shell of your M1 helmet, take a dump in the shell, then use it to fling the turd out of your foxhole to keep said hole somewhat sanitary, then reassembled your soiled helmet and put it back on your head, because an entrenched MG-42 up the hill would cut you in half if you tried to crawl out of that hole in daylight. He took the same risks as the combat troops, didn’t whine about it, and everyone who met him said that he was just a good guy all around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrJaGJ59TCw
“The Story Of GI Joe”, a movie about Pyle in Italy, contains a character based on Capt. Waskow. Played by Robert Mitchum.
Absent Companions …
Absent Friends …
Must be dusty in here….
Very much so today.
Although I do agree with you, living a life worthy of their sacrifice, I think it’s important to have parades, plant flags in cemeteries and have solemn ceremonies on Memorial day, not for those of us that served but as a reminder to the approx. 92% that never served. A reminder for just one day that freedom comes at a price.
So, at 0400 this morning my A/L post was out at the rural cemetery with our annual flag display. Each flag was donated by a deceased veteran’s family and is numbered and named so they can find it. It makes the news and just for today if no other days, the public has a chance to think of those that gave their last breath for this country.