Lest We Forget Memorial Day

[Selene]

NY TIMES FORGETTING WHY WE REMEMBER

"At the end of the Civil War, Americans faced a formidable challenge: how to memorialize 625,000 dead soldiers, Northern and Southern. As Walt Whitman mused, it was “the dead, the dead, the dead — our dead — or South or North, ours all” that preoccupied the country. After all, if the same number of Americans per capita had died in Vietnam as died in the Civil War, four million names would be on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, instead of 58,000.

Officially, in the North, Memorial Day emerged in 1868 when the Grand Army of the Republic, the Union veterans’ organization, called on communities to conduct grave-decorating ceremonies. On May 30, funereal events attracted thousands of people at hundreds of cemeteries in countless towns, cities and mere crossroads. By the 1870s, one could not live in an American town, North or South, and be unaware of the spring ritual."

Yet, as this NY Times article noted:

"But for the earliest and most remarkable Memorial Day, we must return to where the war began. By the spring of 1865, after a long siege and prolonged bombardment, the beautiful port city of Charleston, S.C., lay in ruin and occupied by Union troops. Among the first soldiers to enter and march up Meeting Street singing liberation songs was the 21st United States Colored Infantry; their commander accepted the city’s official surrender. The largest of these events, forgotten until I had some extraordinary luck in an archive at Harvard, took place on May 1, 1865. During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the city’s Washington Race Course and Jockey Club into an outdoor prison. Union captives were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand.

After the Confederate evacuation of Charleston black workmen went to the site, reburied the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course."

Interesting how history will always be growing in our minds if we keep them open and keep questioning the past so that we can have a saner future.

Adam

[Selene]

This hurts my heart.

Adam

[Brant Gaede]

This hurts my heart.

Adam

Poignant. I remember the guy on our street when I was six who gave me a ride on his motorcycle. Died in Korea in an accident on the unloading docks. I remember my SF classmate Robert Johnson who got his legs blown off at Con Thien whose last words, full of IV tubes waiting for a medevac, were, "I'm sorry." I remember John Mayo who got a chest full of bullets. I remember David Boyd who got a bullet almost right between the eyes. Bullets whistle or they crack or they hit you. I think the close ones crack on their way to hopefully, nobody, that SOB, nobody.

--Brant

[caroljane]

This hurts my heart.

Adam

Poignant. I remember the guy on our street when I was six who gave me a ride on his motorcycle. Died in Korea in an accident on the unloading docks. I remember my SF classmate Robert Johnson who got his legs blown off at Con Thien whose last words, full of IV tubes waiting for a medevac, were, "I'm sorry." I remember John Mayo who got a chest full of bullets. I remember David Boyd who got a bullet almost right between the eyes. Bullets whistle or they crack or they hit you. I think the close ones crack on their way to hopefully, nobody, that SOB, nobody.

--Brant

I remember the boy I played Jeopardy with, who could have been Robert or John or David.

[Selene]

UK Telegraph noted:

Barack Obama's decision to play golf on Memorial Day was disrespectful and hardly presidential here.

"Does it matter if the president chooses to play golf on Memorial Day, and for the second time in his presidency (he did so as well in 2009)? I think it does, and it displays extraordinarily bad judgment, not only by Obama himself but also by his advisers. His chief of staff for example should have firmly cautioned against it. President Obama is not just any American but Commander in Chief of the US Armed Forces. The United States is currently engaged in a major war in Afghanistan with over 100,000 troops on the ground, and more than 1,500 have already laid down their lives for their country.

The least the president can do on Memorial Day is spend the whole day with veterans and servicemen’s families while acknowledging their sacrifice."

Adam

[Selene]

This is this years Memorial Day video released by Flopping Aces and it also includes the last several years videos.

The link is here, but even as powerful as this years is, the preceding words by the producer of the video struck home to me. We lost the last living WWI veteran in an Australia nursing home this year. That was a war with cavalry charges, tanks and airplanes. A war with mustard gas and trench mouth. A war to end all wars. Yet here we are with three (3) wars of our own in progress and numerous other wars and conflicts throughout at least five of the seven continents on our planet.

Take some time and remember how many preceded us and as the President explained yesterday gave all they "would be" as well as all they were to "the mission," the "cause" or their comrades.

For better and worse, each death shaped our nation. Each death contributed to what we are today.

My own war experience in Iraq in 2005 and 2006 was far different from my father's. I wasn't wounded. Fortunately, none of the men in my company were killed in action during our tour. But now I know my father's melancholy on Memorial Day. I feel it, and it's the reason I found myself on the verge of lashing out last week when a salesman on the street thrust a flier into my hands titled "Memorial Day Blow-out Sale."

I regained composure and thought about the question I had asked myself as a child: Were they wrong to celebrate?

Few Americans would disagree with the sanctity of Memorial Day. Yet the holiday has become a shopping spree, a party. Retail sales surge as stores release new summer offerings. The holiday weekend is among the top 10 shopping periods each year. Meanwhile, the local parade in my home town is more sparsely attended, and fewer people appear to travel to cemeteries to pay respects to the war dead.

These trends are likely to continue now that the levels of violence have dropped in Iraq and Afghanistan, and American service members appear less frequently in the media. They will continue unless we are more deliberate with our time. After all, our values are shaped by where and how we spend our time.

Memorial Day weekend doesn't need to be a somber event for all. Naturally, it will be different for those families whose lives have been scarred by combat. But you don't need to have experienced war to pay your respects.

So this Memorial Day weekend consider taking a half-hour to honor our war dead. Have a conversation with your children or your parents. Pause. Reflect. If you can make more time, visit a cemetery or take a child to a local parade, then talk to them about service. If you can't travel, watch a Memorial Day concert or parade. Whatever it is, do something deliberate and out of your way.

Is it wrong to celebrate?

No, it's not wrong. But it will be a far more meaningful celebration if it starts with recognizing why we have the opportunity to celebrate.

The song is, I believe, Down to the River to Pray.

Adam

Post Script: Why I Joined by Mark Daly

Edited May 31, 2011 by Selene

[Martin Radwin]

UK Telegraph noted:

Barack Obama's decision to play golf on Memorial Day was disrespectful and hardly presidential here.

"Does it matter if the president chooses to play golf on Memorial Day, and for the second time in his presidency (he did so as well in 2009)? I think it does, and it displays extraordinarily bad judgment, not only by Obama himself but also by his advisers. His chief of staff for example should have firmly cautioned against it. President Obama is not just any American but Commander in Chief of the US Armed Forces. The United States is currently engaged in a major war in Afghanistan with over 100,000 troops on the ground, and more than 1,500 have already laid down their lives for their country.

The least the president can do on Memorial Day is spend the whole day with veterans and servicemen’s families while acknowledging their sacrifice."

Adam

I guess this is what passes for serious analysis in the mainstream media these days.

Never mind that the US is engaged in an endless stream of brutal, murderous, senseless wars having nothing whatever to do with the defense of the US, whose only actual purpose is the extension of the US empire. Never mind the thousands of dead and the tens of thousands of medical/psychological casualties, who come home from the wars after multiple tours of duty with PTSD, only to find that they are put on long waiting lists for help from an overburdened and understaffed VA. Never mind the thousands of veterans who have committed suicide, or the thousands of veterans who are now homeless and living on the streets, or the veterans who apply for disability assistance and are denied, so that the money saved from their denied care can continue to be plowed back into the war machine.

None of this matters. The only thing that matters is that the president should not play golf on Memorial Day, so as to show that he cares about the plight of the veterans living and dead, even though the reality is that he and the military industrial establishment over which he presides don't give a damn about the lives of any of these veterans, except insofar as it may affect their potential future war planning.

The more than 1500 soldiers who have died in Afghanistan didn't lay down their lives for their country. The truth is that they laid down their lives for nothing. Just as the over 4000 US soldiers who have died in Iraq laid down their lives for nothing. Just as the over 50,000 US soldiers who died in Vietnam laid down their lives for nothing. That's the real truth that most Americans don't know and don't want to know. And the purpose of so much government propoganda, which is willingly spread by the mainstream media, is to hide this fact from Americans, to convince them that these wars are noble and that the soldiers who died in them died for a good cause. For if enough Americans understood the truth about these wars and the wasted lives of their sons and daughters, they would be out in the streets of DC with pitchforks, and the politicians who authorized these wars would be hanging from the lampposts.

Martin

[Selene]

Martin:

Your strong arguments have been made by numerous folks that I have respect for, from the Quakers who refused to participate in the Civil War and were imprisoned and tormented and tortured under unspeakable conditions to today's anarchists and libertarians.

Why do you suppose that the majority of veterans are not enrolled in the position you eloquently advocate?

They certainly understand the horror. They certainly are highly intelligent.

I would truly like to hear your ideas on this question.

Adam

[Brant Gaede]

Martin:

Your strong arguments have been made by numerous folks that I have respect for, from the Quakers who refused to participate in the Civil War and were imprisoned and tormented and tortured under unspeakable conditions to today's anarchists and libertarians.

Why do you suppose that the majority of veterans are not enrolled in the position you eloquently advocate?

They certainly understand the horror. They certainly are highly intelligent.

I would truly like to hear your ideas on this question.

Adam

They are heavily invested in what they once did and most vets are not combat vets. Public education has well prepared them: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation with liberty and justice for all."

--Brant