Memorial Day's True Meaning

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.