Remembering
It is Memorial Day, the most solemn of our national holidays.
Let’s all take a moment some time today to remember our fallen soldiers.
It is Memorial Day, the most solemn of our national holidays.
Let’s all take a moment some time today to remember our fallen soldiers.
Comments (Archived):
IIRC, your father was in the military. Good for him and, of course, us.Venture capital finance seems a long way from the military! Maybe in past millennia sons were able to do what their fathers did, but in recent decades in the US that has situation has mostly gone. Then sons have to do something different, and that might involved plowing new ground which can do better than the father did or worse.Since our birth rate is so low we are going extinct, on average US family formation and the current “situation” suck.But, really nice picture of, I assume, Arlington.Here’s some more, with Melania:https://www.youtube.com/wat…
It is a sobering reminder of the huge responsibility of the role of Commander in Chief.
https://poets.org/poem/shie…
Yes. A solemn day of gratitude to those who gave all, as well as to their families.
I heard a great (but sobering) line when I was at the National World War Two Museum in New Orleans last week. “Don’t thank a veteran for their service. Thank them for their sacrifice.”
Thanks. I like the country could use a jog.As leadership devolves and politics taints much. memories or moreso memorializing formally collective events or beliefs falls by the wayside.True for today. True for 911. And others.This is neither a kvetch nor obviously a solution, just an observation.
I remember The McQueen project Queen & Country at the Imperial War Museum only sorry the stamps were not /are not issued to really bring it home:https://www.iwm.org.uk/coll…
The longer we have been at war, the less of any explanation is offered.
D day should be a national holiday.
Not sure about that. Marines in the Pacific might disagree. They had more D-Days than the GIs in Europe. D-Day was certainly a pivotal day in US history. Ironically, Sir Max Hastings a British WW2 historian would argue that the war was won by the Russians, not the Allies. Definitely a controversial position. There have been many pivotal days similar to D-Day in American history. Memorial Day is a nice way to remember them all. If you’d like to learn more about D-Day, here is a link: https://www.nationalww2muse…
https://www.cbsnews.com/vid…
…and that John Bolton and extreme zealots like him should be kept as far away from policy decision making as possible.
.Not today, friend. Today is about the men under those hedstones. Nothing more.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Causality.
.Not today, friend. Go read this.http://themusingsofthebigre…JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
.Our connections to Memorial Day are different.I grew up on Army posts until I went to VMI and then served for 5 years. My mother and father are both buried in a military cemetery. My mother and father both served in WWII. My Dad made it a career.I look at those headstones — that’s what it is all about today, the men under those headstones — and I knew some of them.I served with them. I held bandages on their wounds. I searched for their pulses. I told medics they were dead and to stop. I put them in body bags. I put the body bags on choppers.Sometimes, I gave the orders that decided their fate. I will carry that forever and it doesn’t get lighter with time.I wrote letters to their parents to describe how they died. I attended their funerals. [You don’t believe there’s a God. Go to a service at Arlington.] I delivered caskets to parents.The hardest thing I had to do was to notify their next of kin of the death of their son or husband. I did this five times.It is the cruelest act ever contemplated.I was a kid in my early and mid-twenties. It made me grow up. It made me accountable for myself because when I made the wrong decision, there were consequences.Today is not a day for politics, a blasphemous obscenity on a day like today. It is not a day to append the word “happy” to the words “Memorial Day.”It is a day to reflect upon the sacrifice of those who paid for our freedom with their lives. Who never lived to love, marry, have children, buy a home, start a business, hold a child, attend a graduation, wed off their children, or to hold a grandchild.They sacrificed all of this for us. All we are asked to do in return is to live lives that make this a worthy sacrifice.Respect. Salute.God bless America, a country that produces men like this. We should mourn their passing, but we should also celebrate that such men lived.God bless America.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Thank you and especially all those at Arlington, etc. for your service and sacrifice.
.I sacrificed nothing. It was the greatest honor of my life to be entrusted with the lives of mother’s sons.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
All of my father’s sons and he and the males before him (to my knowledge) were drafted or enlisted. None were lost.Now I have a niece in officer’s training in the National Guard and another who deploys to Iraq this summer. Hoping the trend of safety continues.With this impending departure, sobered this Memorial Day even as I remember with deepest gratitude the sacrifices made by others.Congressman Dan Crenshaw shared a poignant thread this morning that brought it home even further.https://twitter.com/DanCren…