Sunday, May 27, 2012

In Memory of the Casualties of War: Memorial Day

Memorial Day weekend has rolled around again with a record number of Americans hitting the highways headed to beaches and other get away places.  The three day weekend has become a symbol of the beginning of summer ever since the commemoration day was changed in 1968 to create a long weekend.  Unfortunately, somewhere, somehow, the significance of this day has been lost.  Now there is some sort of foggy understanding that it is a patriotic time to honor all our veterans, eat lots of barbecue, and get our first good sunburn of the season.

Time was when this day was not celebrated in this part of the country.  This was "Yankee Memorial Day" not to be confused with "Decoration Day" when families visited cemeteries, cleaned grave sites, and put out flowers to commemorate the Southern war dead.  That has changed down through the years and I think the change was good.  The War has been over now for nearly 150 years.  It is time for it to be over.

Never has a soldier served in combat without being a casualty of sorts.  Some come home missing limbs; others come home irrevocably changed in mind and spirit.  But the ones we commemorate now are those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, giving their lives in service to our country.

Too often, we abstract war in our minds.  We do not want to face up to what it really is when we are filled with patriotic rhetoric and resolve to take care of business. We don't want to think of real people hurt, real people maimed, and real people killed.  Now that the draft is gone, it has become abstract for whole groups of people.  When every able bodied man of 18 had to register and knew that he had a strong chance of being called up, it was much more of a reality.

I grew up with war and unfortunately, a long list of "conflict" have dotted the historic landscape of my life.  My first real memory of war was watching the airplanes fly overhead in the early forties when ,my father had disappeared to some place called "Camp Blanding" and later to a place called the Philippines and Japan.  Two of my uncles were also gone:  one ultimately to Europe to slog through the Battle of the Bulge, the other to the Pacific aboard an air craft carrier.  Four of Aunt Effie's boys, some lying about their age to join up, were scattered across the globe.  She would walk the fields late at night praying for their safety.  All of our men came home, but in some of them there were scars of the spirit which never healed.

We are still in war.  I fear that too often the majority of the people in this country are more concerned with who is on reality TV and how much the price of gas is than on the cost of this war to individuals and families.  I am not interested in getting into the political/global reasons for being in the war.  I am interested in the fact that we, as Americans, need to understand that this is not just the war of those serving.  It is our war.

So, as we complete this weekend, we can't do much for those who lost their lives fighting for this country other than trying to do everything we can for those other casualties of the many wars we have so nobly fought.  I am talking about looking around, being aware, and taking responsibility for this country of ours.

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