For the Fallen

On the day I am posting this, it is Memorial Day in my country, the United States of America.  This day is seen by many as a day off for most workers, the unofficial beginning of the summer, and a great day for a barbecue or other kind of outing.  For others, like my Army family and I, it is a very sacred day where we honor the men and women who in the words of President Abraham Lincoln “...gave the last full measure of devotion” for the great nation founded on the concept that all men are created equal and that champions government of, by, and for the people.

Memorial Day needs to be a day to remember the heroes who gave their lives so that the U.S. can continue to be a free nation serving as a beacon of freedom to the rest of the world.  This year, my nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of the forming of its Army, Navy, and Marine Corps.  Each of those branches of the military has a beyond rich history and heritage of ordinary men and women answering the call, either by volunteering or being drafted, to defend their nation against all enemies foreign and domestic.

The ancient Spartans soldiers had a mantra to return either carrying their shield, symbolizing a victorious return, or lying upon it symbolizing that rather than casting away their shield in order to retreat, they had fought to the end.  Memorial Day is the sacred day that all Americans need to remember, and renew the determination to honor, those who returned home lying on their proverbial shields.

There is a very touching form of paying tribute to a particular group of my nation’s heroes that goes on in Belgium.  I was made aware of this after my brother, who was serving as a U.S. Army attache in Europe visited the American cemetery with his family in that country where several American servicemen who helped liberate it during World War II are buried.  The tribute is that local Belgians can adopt a U.S. soldier’s grave and be its official keeper.  Beyond this act itself, what particularly strikes me is that my brother informed me that so many Belgians remember this sacrifice and want the privilege of keeping one of these graves, that there is a waiting list.

As a veteran of the U.S. Army, and a fourth generation soldier, Memorial Day is a day to remember my Army brothers and sisters who lived the same values that I did, and still try to, but did what I was never called to do and gave their all to cement their devotion to those values and the nation that espouses them.

I can go on about Memorial Day and what it means to me, but I feel that the legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg and the screenwriter Robert Rodat did a great job of that in the film “Saving Private Ryan”.  The final scene shows a man visiting the U.S. Cemetery in Normandy, France where many of the American Soldiers who fell in battle during the D-Day invasion and subsequent fighting in France are laid to rest.  He says some words by the headstone of a soldier that he knew during the war that summarize my own feelings toward those we honor on Memorial Day, and how we all should feel.

God Bless America, the land of the free because of the brave.