Thoughts on Memorial Day

Having grown up in a family with a Dad who had served in World War II and a Mom who worked in a defense plant during the same war, and both of them very active in the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in my hometown, Memorial Day was always an important event in our home. There was a parade and then some ceremony. I recall Dad on the speaker's platform when he was serving as commander of the VFW post. So I approach this "holiday" with a reverence that borders on religious.

From younger days when I saw American history as an endless string of "us versus them" conflicts where the emphasis and fascination was on the "heroic soldier," my thinking and feelings have evolved into something much more sophisticated and subtle. While Memorial Day was originally intended to honor those who fell in battle, it has become a cross between honoring anyone who served and some sort of official start to the summer outdoor grilling season. The later having no connection to the former in the minds of many people--just a three-day weekend at the beginning of summer.

More and more I have come to view the true human costs of war not in terms of those who laid down their lives for our country. In a sense their pain and suffering ended when life left their bodies. The long term costs of wars has been in those left behind. The broken families, hugs never given, friendships never shared, communities and homes a little diminished for loss of each life. There is also the suffering of those who survived battle's horrors. Today we are more attuned to what is labeled post-traumatic stress, but that does not lessen the internal battles which occupy the minds of those who survived.

The film "We Were Soldiers," which is about the U.S.'s early involvement in Vietnam, offers images of what I have come to see as the ultimate costs of war--the delivery of telegrams to the wives of men who were killed in the battle. The soldiers who died paid a heavy price, but so did their families, loved ones and friends who had to live out their lives with only the memory of their lost ones.

This Memorial Day I will keep in my thoughts all those who are today still paying the price for war: lives traumatized, the "vacant chair," the parent gone forever. Herman Wouk wrote, "Th beginning of the end of War lies in Remembrance." When we forget the true price of war, we will continue to fight wars.