It’s a couple
of weeks away as I write this, but too many people don’t, or won’t, understand
the meaning behind Memorial Day. I read
somewhere that veterans from World War Two are dying at the rate of 1000 a day
and, if that’s true, we are losing a national treasure. Every veteran, of any hot war, returns home a
changed person. However they went into
the service, and remember it’s all volunteer, they come back forever
changed. Pat Tillman, who is the only
celebrity that I can name right now, went to war when he didn’t have to. In World War Two, big name Hollywood
stars went to war without being drafted.
Some everyday guys who were in the service, came back and became big
stars. Combat veterans, every single one
of them, have stories that should be told, but mostly never are. You cannot go anywhere in the United States,
on any day, and not run into a veteran…whether you know he’s a veteran or
not. If you know a veteran, thank them
for their service, because whatever they did, or sacrificed, allows the rest of
us to live as we do. They are, as a
class, very close-mouthed about what they did, what they saw and how it
affected them. Now and then I see old
movies on the TV about World War Two and think that there has to be a grain of
truth in the story. There were Army Air
Corps(that’s what they called the Air Force then) commanding officers that
surely agonized about sending hundreds of young men to fly into flak-filled
skies over Europe. The death rate of the combined groups that
made up the 8th Air Force was nothing short of horrific. The war in the Pacific was equally terrible,
perhaps even more so because the enemy, the Japanese, had no problems being
kamakazi pilots and flying to their death onto ships of the US Navy. The Japanese army, and a lot of civilians had
been taught that the Americans were barbarians and so they chose to fight to
the last man. Many civilians jumped off
cliffs, with their children, rather than be captured by the Americans. The island hopping strategy took a tremendous
toll on Marines and soldiers charging onto a nearly-naked beach and facing
killing zones of machine guns set up by the Japanese. Throughout American history, the US Navy has
taken care of business…from the shores of Tripoli
where we sent a small detachment of Marines and quelled the Barbary Pirates, to
the Strait of Hormuz where elements of our
Navy keep the shipping lanes open.
Korea, which was my war, although I didn’t see combat, pitted American
forces, sometimes in near freeze-to-death weather against a North Korean army
and, by proxy but sometimes directly, a Chinese army of overwhelming odds and
the US Eighth Army suffered a decisive defeat. The two Gulf wars, for whatever
reason they were started, had US forces not only fighting a declared enemy but,
for the first time, their own government which had installed some Rules For
Engagement that put American forces at a disadvantage. Although it was an important event, the
killing of Osama Bin Laden, was mostly symbolic in its importance. We are now engaged in a battle, albeit an
undeclared war, with a shadowy enemy who could be right alongside an American
trooper on any given day. To this day,
volunteer members of the armed forces face the possibility of green-on-blue
attacks. So, my friends, from World War
One, which was supposed to be the war to end all wars, and from which we got
troops that were gassed, that were introduced to mechanized warfare with the
introduction of the tank, and going even further back, to our own war between
the states…there is a reason, a very good reason, to observe Memorial Day. Not for the automobile sales, not for the
department store sales, and not for appliance sales…it is a day to memorialize
our fallen, our wounded, our heroes, men and women who experienced horror and
may never speak about it. The last
Monday in May is, and should be, recognized as a time to honor them. Remember…all gave some, some gave all.
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