As promised, the annual posting of my Memorial Day essay below, only a day late.  Overstayed the family gathering a bit and got home later than we had hoped...

Also, Rick Moran at Pajamas Media has an ode to the heartland of sorts, the place not the website, that has a similar tenor.  A taste:
America’s small-town culture has been ridiculed, criticized, and dismissed — especially over the last few decades — by an elite that cannot fathom why anyone would wish to live more than a couple of miles from a world class opera house or art museum. Nor can they understand why someone would choose country quiet over the babble and cacophony of the big city.

It truly catches the flavor of flyover country so by all means check it out.
RTWT: Small-Town Heroes from the Heartland 


                                                Memorial Day

We used the hilly back roads of beautiful Southwest Wisconsin on that mild spring day.  There were three or four cars and a van, for the guns, ammo, and colors.  By day’s end we will have visited a half dozen or more cemeteries.  I was 9, close to my son’s age now, and the worst of Viet Nam was yet to happen.

For some reason, luck in retrospect, I, of all nine siblings, was left in my Father’s charge that Memorial Day.  As commander of the local VFW he was among the volunteer members assembled to participate in services for nearby cemeteries, driven by largely unnoticed most of the year.  Today was different though.  Today not only did we stop, but we also remembered, and we made a grand show of it.  We memorialized, with uniforms, with flags, with guns, with taps, with ceremony. Today, one of 365, we make a point of visiting the final resting place of the men and women who died for our country.  Today we say you are not forgotten, and we say we do not take your sacrifice for granted.    

The members ranged in age and included veterans from the worst conflicts of the deadliest century in the history of mankind.  World War 2, the war to end all wars, Korea, the war that changed the definition of war, and Viet Nam, that confused venture that forced our nation to question the validity of war itself, a question persisting today.  The names are those from another time; Ernie, Leo, Guerdon, Myron, Louie.  They were an otherwise typical crew that served in all branches but today were resplendent, smart and sharp, in their uniforms; dark shirts, white ties, helmets, belts, and spats, which were almost as cool as the guns.

The ceremony never varied, a prayer, a sermon, thankfully short, gunfire, taps, and onto the next cemetery.  I never covered my ears for the shooting.  I didn’t want to embarrass Dad by appearing a coward; an act, which my young mind had determined, had absolutely no place in these circumstances.  I thought if the people we are honoring actually gave their lives for our country the least I could do is endure the peal and concussion of three blank rounds.  Besides, I was with the guys in uniform, and I wanted to be like them.

As the morning gave way the heat increased and with it the need for liquid refreshment as provided by whichever VFW club was nearest, since every town had it’s own back then.  I recall Schlitz Shorties or “Lil Joe’s” as being the beverage of choice.  Remember those?  I could think of no better way to spend a holiday than with my Dad and a bunch of gregarious war Vets tousling my hair and buying me all the pop I could drink.

I remember hoping for war stories and, more telling than I knew at the time, I remember that hope going unfulfilled.  There were no grand tales of heroism, no recounting of life and death scenarios in far off lands, no lurid descriptions of killing the bad guys.  Even more curious was the silence of the younger vets who had just served in Viet Nam.  Surely they couldn’t have forgotten so soon.

As I reflected on that disappointment it occurred to me I was at perfect odds with these old soldiers; I wanted them to remember out loud the stories they were struggling mightily to forget.  I wanted to be enthralled by tales from homegrown versions of Pappy Boyington and Audi Murphy while completely oblivious to the mental scars these stories might have inflicted. These men, the source of my hopes for tales of triumph and victory, were instead perfect profiles in dignity, somberness and sobriety, even with beer.

Wanting first hand glorification of war from the guys who fought them is typical selfishness for a nine-year old.  The contrast to the incomparable unselfishness of those we memorialize this weekend is as vast and profound as can be.     

Their surviving comrades, as in this fondest of childhood memories, will be visiting countless cemeteries across the country this weekend.  Memorial Day is about remembering and every Memorial Day I remember that day.  Like me then, my kids now have little understanding of why I insist on dragging them to Memorial Day services.  Like me now, one day they too will understand why this is not just another excuse for a three-day weekend.  Hopefully they’ll also come to appreciate the ultimate irony; that the same guys who would most benefit from forgetting wars are the ones in charge of memorializing those who died fighting them.

In our continuing endeavor to achieve a war free world, doing so without remembering the price paid would be a travesty.  The least we civilians can do is remember that, and them, on Memorial Day.



Richard P. "Dick" Byrne 1926-2008