For much of America, Memorial Day means an extra day
off from their work week. It means the end of the school year and the official
start of summer. It means cook-outs, picnics and trips to the beach and, for
some, visits to the grave sites of lost loved ones, where they’ll lay wreaths
or plant flowers in their memory.
The reality of this day, which became an official
national holiday in 1971, is that we honor those who have lost their lives in
military service to our country. Started shortly after the conclusion of the
Civil War, it was formerly known as ‘Decoration Day’, a time when our nation’s
patriot heroes were remembered by placing wreaths, flags and flowers at their
resting places. It is to be a solemn, somber occasion during which this nation
reflects on the sacrifices made by those who have kept us free. We are to honor
America’s military combatants who paid the ultimate price, in all wars and
conflicts, by shedding their blood so that we, today, can live free of the
shackles of those who would enslave us and trample our Constitution.
We honor those who fell freeing us from British
colonialism in places such as Bunker Hill, Boston and Valley Forge; from the
North versus South Civil War, which was anything but civil, in places like Charleston,
Fredericksburg, Manassas, Gettysburg and Antietam.
We honor those who sacrificed their lives during the
Great War, often referred to as the ‘War to End All Wars’, at Belleau Wood,
Chateau-Thierry and Cantigny; the Second World War in the hell that was Pearl
Harbor, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Normandy and Bastogne.
We honor the brave men who fought in Korea, killed
during combat action at Inchon, the Imjin River, the frozen Chosin Reservoir
and Pork Chop Hill; those who died in the steamy jungles of Viet Nam in places
such as Pleiku, Ia Drang, the A Shau Valley and Khe Sanh.
We honor those who have fought and died in America’s ongoing
War on Terror in the heat and grit at Anbar Province, Fallujah, Mosul and Basra
in Iraq, and Tora Bora, Kamdesh, Wanat and the Helmand and Kandahar Provinces
in Afghanistan.
We honor men and women who gave their lives amidst the
artillery barrages, the bayonet charges, withering automatic weapons fire,
aircraft crashes; in the dark, flaming, smoke-filled compartments of torpedoed
ships, inside the oven-like personnel carriers hit by rocket-propelled grenades
or buried improvised explosive devices, in the trenches, fox holes and bunkers
in every war the United States has fought, hot steel raining down from enemy
bombers or shards of shrapnel from air burst artillery rounds.
We honor those who died protecting this nation;
whether the conflict was deemed just or
unjust by the American public matters not. These patriot heroes answered the
call to arms, protected us from all enemies foreign or domestic, in our own
nation and on foreign shores. They left behind their wives, husbands, brothers,
sisters, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, loved ones who will forever
remember the souls laid bare upon the altar of freedom.
Much as the State of Israel pauses as one on Holocaust
Remembrance Day to recall the millions of Jews whose lives were stilled by the
Nazis during World War Two, we also MUST pause to honor those who gave their
lives in defense of our United States of America.
God rest the souls of all our patriot heroes this, and
every, Memorial Day.
