Monday, March 18, AD 2024 11:00pm

Memorial Day Pledge

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.

Abraham Lincoln

I have always loved Memorial Day.  A simple holiday, it unofficially marks the beginning of Summer in the US.  Fun and frolic marks the long weekend.  In many places school has ended or will be ending, and families are getting into vacation mode.  In my lifetime I have always been able to enjoy the holiday in peace and freedom, and that is due to the men the holiday honors.

Our war dead, stretching from the Revolution to the most recent skirmishes in Afghanistan and Iraq, I wonder what they make of all this.  Varying reactions no doubt, as varied as the men who died in our wars.  I assume that most of them wouldn’t begrudge people having fun, or gathering with their families.  During their lives almost all them liked having fun and loved their families.  Parting from loved ones is always a terrible burden on anyone who has gone to war, and today we remember those who never came back to their families. Thus I assume that the fun aspect of the weekend would not offend most of them, but rather please them.  However, Memorial Day is so much more than that.

The pain of a family, especially parents and spouses, who lose someone in a war is an agony that only time can dim but can never end.  Those of us who have fortunately not suffered such a loss can only imagine the grief and pain.  The least we can do for those families, and for their dead, is what I call the Memorial Day Pledge, taken from the last sentence of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:

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.

Never should our war dead die in vain.  Never should our troops be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice unless the nation is ready to win the conflict they are fighting in.  Never again should politicians play with war, cheering it at the beginning and then quickly running for cover when the going gets tough.  If the nation is unwilling to fight to win, no matter the cost, then it is better not to get involved in a conflict.  Anything less is a betrayal of every man who dies in battle.

Of course the circumstances of the war in which they fell in no way takes away from either the valor of our war dead or the value of their sacrifice.  We owe them and all our war dead a debt we can never repay.  Living Lincoln’s words each day is the best remembrance we can have for the men who died to ensure that we remained free and safe here at home.

Go, tell the Spartans, stranger passing by
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

Simonides

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T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Monday, May 29, AD 2017 5:43am

Amen.

The tradition (as I knew it) called for flying the Flag at half-staff until 12PM Noon when it was ceremonially raised to full-staff.

The motto of the 187th Infantry Regiment (Rakkasans) is “Ne Desit Virtus” That Valor Shall Not Fail. If you saw the movie “Hamburger Hill” that was the Third Battalion, 187th.

JohntheMad
JohntheMad
Monday, May 29, AD 2017 6:58am

On your Memorial Day I salute my American cousins who have served in the profession of arms. May God bless and keep your war dead and may perpetual light shine upon them. JohntheMad Major (Ret’d) Royal Canadian Air Force

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Monday, May 29, AD 2017 11:32am

A rumor of war . . .

It was not “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Coincidentally, on 29 May 1453, The Eastern Christian Empire in Constantinople “perished from the Earth.”

From a 1999 (before the Global Terror War On Us) Economist article. “The Byzantine Empire, denuded of its lands, was dependent on Italian allies; it had suffered the flight of Greek scholars (particularly brilliant in Byzantium’s final years) to Italy, where they helped to stimulate the Renaissance.

“Hundreds of years of wars in south-eastern Europe: Austro-Hungarian vs. Ottoman empires. The Turks besieged Vienna in 1683 and in the 130 years after were repeatedly at war with Russia or Austria. They held southern Greece until 1832, today’s Bulgaria, Romania, Bosnia and nominally Serbia until 1878, the lands south of these down to liberated Greece until 1913. Hence the Muslim pockets—Albania, Bosnia—that for most Europeans today are the only reminder that the country they see as a source of cheap, resented, migrant labour was once a mighty power in Europe.

“But a part of Europe? Allied with Germany in the first world war, and therefore stripped of their remaining Middle Eastern empire, the Turks by 1922 were strong enough again to drive Greece’s troops, and centuries of Greek society, from Anatolia. Old enmities were resharpened by the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus in 1974. If the European Union still hesitates, despite Turkey’s decades inside NATO, about its wish for EU membership too, the real reasons lie centuries deep; not least in 1453.”

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