No matter what you plan to do this last Monday in May which is Memorial Day, please remember the holiday didn’t begin as a day of celebration or commerce, but one of solemnity and, indeed, memoriam.
The history of this holiday is honoring sacrifice. Many of our veterans have given life, and increasingly, limb for this country, and that must be saluted. Some of our wars are those of disastrous execution, others of deceptive inception, some a bit of both, but they are all ours.
In a way, Memorial Day may be a time for us to consider the evolution of this day: A day established by a disadvantaged population to honor war heroes who now belong to a military whose members are increasingly being drawn from a disadvantaged population.
Memorial Day is the day to honor the war dead. It is a simple concept meant to be observed by the men, the women, and the children of the United States.
It is the day to remember the men and women who gave their lives for this great country, its flaws and all. It is to honor those of the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force, the Coast Guard, the officers, the enlisted, the drafted, who died in the defense of freedom. And those who have given and those who will give the ultimate sacrifice in our nation’s present War on Terror.
I wonder when Memorial Day became a day other than to honor the war dead. Was it when we made it a three-day weekend, when we no longer observed Memorial Day on May 30? Many have pondered this since Congress passed the three-day holiday law in 1971. The national VFW in its 2002 Memorial Day message said, “Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general public's nonchalant observance of Memorial Day.’’
Many observe Memorial Day with the proper reverence. We see it in those who take their children to the local cemetery to honor the war dead and memories of other loved ones. We see it in the flags placed on the graves of veterans. We see it in the honor guards who travel cemetery to cemetery on Memorial Day to perform their solemn salute and render taps. We see it in the stories the veterans tell of comrades who didn’t make it home.
Yet we are drifting away from the tradition of honoring sacrifice and memoriam. The public in general and the elected officials who have sanctioned and sustained our wars, sometimes over substantial public objection, have a diminishing personal stake on the battlefields. President Obama isn’t a military veteran. As PBS reported: In 2015, less than 18 percent of the 535 combined members in the U.S. House and Senate had active-duty military service on their résumé, down from a peak in 1977 when 80 percent of lawmakers boasted military service. Some say the transition from the draft to an all-volunteer military in 1973 is a driving force of the decline, but veterans and their advocates say they face more challenges running for office in the modern era of political campaigns.
As of October 2015, there were just over 1.3 million people serving in the U.S. Armed Forces, according to numbers from the Defense Manpower Data Center, a body of the Department of Defense. That means only about one percent of the American population is active military personnel. Also consider the number of active duty military personnel over the past 70 years. In the 1940s, during the height of World War II, nearly nine percent of Americans were serving in the military. During the Vietnam War, Gulf War, Iraq War, and War in Afghanistan, less than two percent of the U.S. population served.
Many have poured out their feelings of memoriam in songs and beautiful, sad poems, most notably “In Flanders Fields’’ by John D. McCrae of the Canadian Army, about the battle at Ypres, Belgium, in World War I. McCrae treated the injured and wrote, “At the end of the first day, if anyone had told us we had to spend 17 days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done.” He was moved to write the poem that has come to embody Memorial Day:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow,/Between the crosses, row on row/That mark our place; and in the sky/The larks, still bravely singing, fly/Scarce heard amid the guns below./We are the Dead. Short days ago/We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,/Loved and were loved, and now we lie/In Flanders fields./Take up our quarrel with the foe!/To you from failing hands, we throw/The torch — be yours to hold it high!/If ye break faith with us who died/We shall not sleep,/Though poppies grow/In Flanders fields.
Think about all this during this three-day weekend between the pancakes, barbecue, and shopping. On this Memorial Day, be proud to think of those who died in defense of the American flag. Be proud to be an American, so all those brave men and women shall not have died in vain.
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INKling of the Week:
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” –John F. Kennedy
