From "Fallen Heroes" a photo essay by Daniel J. Wood. Location: Barrancas National Cemetery, Pensacola Florida.
Posted on 05/26/2007 1:43:55 PM PDT by saveliberty
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by Andrew Dean.
"There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for another."
Memorial Day ,the holiday ,began as a spontaneous outpouring of honoring and remembrance for six hundred thousand U.S. citizens who died fighting the Civil War (history of the holiday here).
Towns and villages in both the North and the South began decorating the grave sites of the war dead with flowers, hence the early name for the holiday: Decoration Day.
Music has also been an important part of the Memorial Day observance from it's inception. Musicians may find this antique sheet music interesting. It's dedicated to the "Ladies of the South who are decorating the graves of the Confederate Dead." The hymn was published in 1867:
Kneel Where Our Loves Are Sleeping
Words by G.W.R.Music by Mrs. L. Nella Sweet
published 1867
Kneel where our loves are sleeping, Dear ones days gone by,
Here we bow in holy reverence, Our bosoms heave the heartfelt sigh.
They fell like brave men, true as steel, And pour’d their blood like rain,
We feel we owe them all we have, And can but weep and kneel again.
CHORUS
Kneel where our loves are sleeping, They lost but still were good and true,
Our fathers, brothers fell still fighting, We weep, ‘tis all that we can do.
VERSE 2:
Here we find our noble dead, Their spirits soar’d to him above,
Rest they now about his throne, For God is mercy, God is love.
Then let us pray that we may live, As pure and good as they have been,
That dying we may ask of him, To open the gate and let us in.
CHORUS
Kneel where our loves are sleeping, They lost but still were good and true,
Our fathers, brothers fell still fighting, We weep, ‘tis all that we can do."
Decoration Day became official with General Orders No. 11 issued by General John Logan, Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic in May 1868.
And while some Americans today view Memorial Day as another day off of work, or the chance for a three day trip to the beach, many Americans remember the sacrifice this day recalls and we honor those who have fallen so we might have the freedom and luxuries of a holiday to enjoy.
In military cemeteries across the Nation and also in lands where U.S. soldiers died far from home (list here with Memorial Day events) men, women and children will gather to remember, reflect and to honor those who gave what Abraham Lincoln called "that last full measure of devotion.
Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg Address
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.President Abraham Lincoln
November 1863
Continuing the musical tradition, singers like Trace Atkins offer this video "Arlington." Lyrics below:
Arlington
I never thought that this is where I'd settle down,
I thought I'd die an old man back in my hometown,
They gave me this plot of land, me and some other men, for a job well done,
there's a big white house sits on a hill just up the road,
the man inside he cried the day they brought me home,
they folded up a flag and told my mom and dad, we're proud of your son
Chorus:
And I'm proud to be on this peaceful piece of property,
I'm on sacred ground and I'm in the best of company,
I'm thankful for those things I've done,
I can rest in peice, I'm one of the chosen ones, I made it to Arlington
I remember daddy brought me here when I was eight,
we searched all day to find out where my granddad lay,
and when we finally found that cross,
he said, "son this is what it cost to keep us free" Now here I am,
a thousand stones away from him,
he recognized me on the first day I came in,
and it gave me a chill when he clicked his heels, and saluted me.
(Repeat Chorus)
and every time I hear twenty-one guns,
I know they brought another hero home to us.
We're thankful for those thankful for the things we've done,
we can rest in peace, 'cause we are the chosen ones,
we made it to Arlington, yea dust to dust,
don't cry for us, we made it to Arlington.
More video music tributes:
David Matthews of Pack 308 places a flag on a grave at Zachary Taylor National Cemetery May 26, 2007 in Louisville, Kentucky. Boy Scouts from the Seneca District and the Lincoln Heritage Council, which represents the Louisville area, participated in the flag placing. This was the 25th year that scouts have been placing flags on the graves at the cemetery. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
Memorial Day in Iraq
Today in Iraq, U.S. soldiers, both men and women ,will observe Memorial Day with personal reflections on fellow soldiers who have died in that long conflict. One news report even showed Iraqi Sheiks and tribal leaders coming to a U.S. Marine compound to pay their respects to some of the 3444 U.S. soldiers who have given their lives to help Iraq and ensure U.S. National Security.
While each of those lives lost is tragic and we honor and mourn their loss, we can also be thankful that we live in a nation where such sacrifice is less and less called upon. Since Memorial Day started as an observance of our Civil War dead, contrast the 3444 fallen soldiers in Iraq over four years with the 3,650 U.S. and Confederate troops who died at the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862.
Mark Steyn puts it in perspective and offers a message which should also be heard on this day:
Please join your fellow Americans in a National Moment of Remembrance at 3 P.M. on Memorial Day, Monday, May 28, 2007. One minute of quiet reflection is not too much to ask to honor the sacrifices which make freedom possible. Always remember that "All gave some, some gave all" for you.The loss of proportion
Mark Steyn
May 30th 2004
More than 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War - or about 1.8 percent of the population. Today, if 1.8 percent of the population were killed in war, there would be 5.4 million graves to decorate on Decoration Day.
But that's the difference between then and now: the loss of proportion. They had victims galore back in 1863, but they weren't a victim culture. They had a lot of crummy decisions and bureaucratic screw-ups worth re-examining, but they weren't a nation that prioritized retroactive pseudo-legalistic self-flagellating vaudeville over all else. They had hellish setbacks but they didn't lose sight of the forest in order to obsess week after week on one tiny twig of one weedy little tree.
There is something not just ridiculous but unbecoming about a hyperpower 300 million strong whose elites - from the deranged former vice president down - want the outcome of a war, and the fate of a nation, to hinge on one freaky jailhouse; elites who are willing to pay any price, bear any burden, as long as it's pain-free, squeaky-clean and over in a week. The sheer silliness dishonors the memory of all those we're supposed to be remembering this Memorial Day.
Playing by Gore-Kennedy rules, the Union would have lost the Civil War, the rebels the Revolutionary War, and the colonists the French and Indian Wars. There would, in other words, be no America. Even in its grief, my part of New Hampshire understood that 141 years ago. We should, too.
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Memorial Day ping
Glenn Reynolds posted this—http://instapundit.com/archives2/005651.php
Sacred days...
Gathering of Eagles, Rolling Thunder Rally
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=25636_Gathering_of_Eagles-Rolling_Thunder_Rally&only
:-) Thank you, freema.
Blackfive has a Thank you from those left behind
(hat tip, Sister Toldjah, a wonderful blog)
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2007/05/memorial_day_th.html
Oops. Hat tip for this one was Wizbang blog, which is also a wonderful blog.
REMEMBER! WITHOUT THIER SCARIFICE THIER WOULD BE NO AMERICA!
|
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
John Stuart Mill
English economist & philosopher (1806 - 1873)
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/27169.html
Thank you to those who serve and who have served to keep us free and to keep us safe.
Thank you, LUV W.
You’re welcome. Thank you for the “Remember”. We need to.
God bless you!
God Bless you, your family, our troops, their families and God Bless America.
American honor
Peter Collier has a great column in today’s Wall Street Journal on the occasion of Memorial Day. The column is “American honor” (subscribers only — I’m sure the Journal will make it freely accessible on Sunday or Monday). Among many other excellent books, Collier is the author most recently of a book on living Medal of Honor recipients: Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty. The column takes advantage of Peter’s work on the Medal of Honor book and reflects on the elite disdain for martial heroism:
Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: Those who had given all their tomorrows, as was said of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, for our todays. But in a world saturated with selfhood, where every death is by definition a death in vain, the notion of sacrifice today provokes puzzlement more often than admiration. We support the troops, of course, but we also believe that war, being hell, can easily touch them with an evil no cause for engagement can wash away. And in any case we are more comfortable supporting them as victims than as warriors.
Former football star Pat Tillman and Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham were killed on the same day: April 22, 2004. But as details of his death fitfully emerged from Afghanistan, Tillman has become a metaphor for the current conflict — a victim of fratricide, disillusionment, coverup and possibly conspiracy. By comparison, Dunham, who saved several of his comrades in Iraq by falling on an insurgent’s grenade, is the unknown soldier. The New York Times, which featured Abu Ghraib on its front page for 32 consecutive days, put the story of Dunham’s Medal of Honor on the third page of section B.
Not long ago I was asked to write the biographical sketches for a book featuring formal photographs of all our living Medal of Honor recipients. As I talked with them, I was, of course, chilled by the primal power of their stories. But I also felt pathos: They had become strangers — honored strangers, but strangers nonetheless — in our midst....
The column provides glimpses of the unbelievable heroism of our bravest men at war. Here is Peter’s portrait of a few of our Vietnam-era heroes:
By the Vietnam War, the journalists were omnipresent, but the men were performing primarily for each other. One story that expresses this isolation and comradeship involves a SEAL team ambushed on a beach after an aborted mission near North Vietnam’s Cua Viet river base.
After a five-hour gunfight, Cmdr. Tom Norris, already a legend thanks to his part in a harrowing rescue mission for a downed pilot (later dramatized in the film BAT-21), stayed behind to provide covering fire while the three others headed to rendezvous with the boat sent to extract them. At the water’s edge, one of the men, Mike Thornton, looked back and saw Tom Norris get hit. As the enemy moved in, he ran back through heavy fire and killed two North Vietnamese standing over Norris’s body. He lifted the officer, barely alive with a shattered skull, and carried him to the water and then swam out to sea where they were picked up two hours later.
The two men have been inseparable in the 30 years since.
The POWs of Vietnam configured a mini-America in prison that upheld the values beginning to wilt at home as a result of protest and dissension. John McCain tells of Lance Sijan, an airman who ejected over North Vietnam and survived for six weeks crawling (because of his wounds) through the jungle before being captured.
Close to death when he reached Hanoi, Sijan told his captors that he would give them no information because it was against the code of conduct. When not delirious, he quizzed his cellmates about camp security and made plans to escape. The North Vietnamese were obsessed with breaking him, but never did. When he died after long sessions of torture Sijan was, in Sen. McCain’s words, “a free man from a free country.”
Leo Thorsness was also at the Hanoi Hilton. The Air Force pilot had taken on four MiGs trying to strafe his wingman who had parachuted out of his damaged aircraft; Mr. Thorsness destroyed two and drove off the other two. He was shot down himself soon after this engagement and found out by tap code that his name had been submitted for the Medal.
One of Mr. Thorsness’s most vivid memories from seven years of imprisonment involved a fellow prisoner named Mike Christian, who one day found a grimy piece of cloth, perhaps a former handkerchief, during a visit to the nasty concrete tank where the POWs were occasionally allowed a quick sponge bath. Christian picked up the scrap of fabric and hid it.
Back in his cell he convinced prisoners to give him precious crumbs of soap so he could clean the cloth. He stole a small piece of roof tile which he laboriously ground into a powder, mixed with a bit of water and used to make horizontal stripes. He used one of the blue pills of unknown provenance the prisoners were given for all ailments to color a square in the upper left of the cloth. With a needle made from bamboo wood and thread unraveled from the cell’s one blanket, Christian stitched little stars on the blue field.
“It took Mike a couple weeks to finish, working at night under his mosquito net so the guards couldn’t see him,” Mr. Thorsness told me. “Early one morning, he got up before the guards were active and held up the little flag, waving it as if in a breeze. We turned to him and saw it coming to attention and automatically saluted, some of us with tears running down our cheeks. Of course, the Vietnamese found it during a strip search, took Mike to the torture cell and beat him unmercifully. Sometime after midnight they pushed him into our cell, so bad off that even his voice was gone. But when he recovered in a couple weeks he immediately started looking for another piece of cloth.”
Peter concludes:
We impoverish ourselves by shunting these heroes and their experiences to the back pages of our national consciousness. Their stories are not just boys’ adventure tales writ large. They are a kind of moral instruction. They remind of something we’ve heard many times before but is worth repeating on a wartime Memorial Day when we’re uncertain about what we celebrate. We’re the land of the free for one reason only: We’re also the home of the brave.
I subscribe to the Journal in both hard copy and online, but I thank reader Michael Yore for drawing this great, thought-provoking column to our attention.
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/017752.php
BTTT
Thank you, saveliberty.
I came to realize just that, on my own... but Mill says it so much better.
Thanks for the *PING*
Thank you for posting that, Bahbah!
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