Memorial Day 2008

[riptidenj]

This past weekend was Memorial Day Weekend here in the USA (I am

one of those throwbacks who remembers when Memorial Day was a

separate holiday and not just another three day weekend for government)

My family has been largely untouched by the wars of the United States, few served, very few were lost. My old man was Quartermaster Corps, but he and I never talked, my mother mentioned a cousin by marriage who

was MIA in the Bulge, the rest were were either too young, too old or the wrong gender. I recall the dining in scene from "Chariots of Fire" when the

camera focuses on the wooden plaque that simplys says 1914-1919"

and the list of names goes on and on and you realizes these were the UK's best and brightest, I remember reading Martin Gilbert's biography of

Churchill in which in the footnotes he gives biographical notes for various people as he introduces them, I was struck by how many of these grandees had lost sons in the First World War-one lord lost 4 as I recall.

Asquith's son Raymond was killed. Then there was the Pals Battalions who on July 1, 1916 climbed out of their trenches on the Somme. In this country we had the Fighting Sullivans, who served and died together when their ship

the USS Juneau was sunk on November 13, 1942. France was bled white in WWI, Belgium was overrun in both wars, Holland suffered under

the German heel in WWII. So I have nothing to complain about.

The best comment on what Memorial Day really means was made by Charles Johnson Post (1873-1956) author of "The Little War of Private

Post" about his experiences with the 71st New York in the Cuban

Campaign of 1898. "Mere skirmishing" compared to the Civil War or

the great slaughters of the 20th Century, but as Post reminds us:

"Whether a man fals with 20,000 others in a grand battle or all by himself on a lonely outpost, he is a 100% casualty to himself. What more is there to give?"