RMSM Scott Miller, December 1969 Victoria Peak, Hong KongHi, folks, and Happy Memorial Day. Someone asked me the other night how many barbecues I thought would be going on today and when I told him I had no idea but that I was dying of curiosity about why he wanted to know that, he just shrugged and said, “I’m going to two, is all. I just wondered how many others there were.”
We sat down over another latte (This is Seattle, remember?) and did the math. We figured that in one way or another, almost every American knows someone who either served this nation under arms and didn’t come back or knows someone who did, including veterans who on this day and on Nov. 11, celebrate fallen comrades. We couldn’t come up with an exact number but we figured that it probably added up to a bunch of barbecues.
I’m glad. I think it’s good to remember and respect those who made the ultimate sacrifice. There’s not a town or city in the nation which doesn’t have cemeteries where tiny American flags fly on headstones and even in foreign countries whose names I can hardly pronounce. Plain fact is, Americans have been dying bravely all over the world for almost 250 years now.
I can relate. I’m a veteran myself. But since I’m shy by nature and trained in gregariosity (If that’s not a word, we can always make it one, right?), I’ve never been much for public celebrations. Also, being a Pisces. I tend to go to deeper and quieter places to remember, reflect and let my emotions go for awhile.
I hope we never stop celebrating holidays like these. But I’d also like to see them tempered by some other considerations. I don’t know how the rest of you feel, but I miss the people I lost in “my” war.
I miss their humor. I miss hassling with them. I miss sharing letters from home and I miss them being there to count on when there was totally no one else. Those I lost didn’t just make that ultimate sacrifice for those they left behind, they made it for those with whom they served.
By my reckoning, these are a real special breed of Americans. We’ve needed them in time of war and they’ve come through for us. Down the generations and certainly unto the present one.
We’ve also needed them in time of peace and sometimes I think that because so many of them died on the battlefields of the world, there’s never been quite enough of them left to make this nation, much less this world, an enduringly safe place.
We need, perhaps now more than at any other time in our history, that vision these heroes had that made them see beyond themselves. We need the power and purity of that absolute and total belief that what they and their comrades were doing would ultimately bring about a more peaceful society which made their choice the only choice.
For their sacrifice to mean anything at all, it seems to me it’s just like Lincoln said after Gettysburg. We need to live with the same conviction and sense of purpose by which they served and died.
We need to remember that they’re still doing that and that maybe if we did our job a little better, there’d be a few more around to celebrate with next year and a few less to miss.
I could live with that. With all due respect to all those barbecues.
We sat down over another latte (This is Seattle, remember?) and did the math. We figured that in one way or another, almost every American knows someone who either served this nation under arms and didn’t come back or knows someone who did, including veterans who on this day and on Nov. 11, celebrate fallen comrades. We couldn’t come up with an exact number but we figured that it probably added up to a bunch of barbecues.
I’m glad. I think it’s good to remember and respect those who made the ultimate sacrifice. There’s not a town or city in the nation which doesn’t have cemeteries where tiny American flags fly on headstones and even in foreign countries whose names I can hardly pronounce. Plain fact is, Americans have been dying bravely all over the world for almost 250 years now.
I can relate. I’m a veteran myself. But since I’m shy by nature and trained in gregariosity (If that’s not a word, we can always make it one, right?), I’ve never been much for public celebrations. Also, being a Pisces. I tend to go to deeper and quieter places to remember, reflect and let my emotions go for awhile.
I hope we never stop celebrating holidays like these. But I’d also like to see them tempered by some other considerations. I don’t know how the rest of you feel, but I miss the people I lost in “my” war.
I miss their humor. I miss hassling with them. I miss sharing letters from home and I miss them being there to count on when there was totally no one else. Those I lost didn’t just make that ultimate sacrifice for those they left behind, they made it for those with whom they served.
By my reckoning, these are a real special breed of Americans. We’ve needed them in time of war and they’ve come through for us. Down the generations and certainly unto the present one.
We’ve also needed them in time of peace and sometimes I think that because so many of them died on the battlefields of the world, there’s never been quite enough of them left to make this nation, much less this world, an enduringly safe place.
We need, perhaps now more than at any other time in our history, that vision these heroes had that made them see beyond themselves. We need the power and purity of that absolute and total belief that what they and their comrades were doing would ultimately bring about a more peaceful society which made their choice the only choice.
For their sacrifice to mean anything at all, it seems to me it’s just like Lincoln said after Gettysburg. We need to live with the same conviction and sense of purpose by which they served and died.
We need to remember that they’re still doing that and that maybe if we did our job a little better, there’d be a few more around to celebrate with next year and a few less to miss.
I could live with that. With all due respect to all those barbecues.
Take care, yahoos (and yahoo-ettes?), and thanks again for the ear, then, eh?
Rusty
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