It was a beautiful day for a parade; the bagpipes blared down Main Street and Broadway. Then the brass band, followed by Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Brownies, Young veterans, Vietnam Veterans, Korean Veterans.
Halfway through the parade there was a single car. In it were elderly men in their commemorative caps and shirts. They do not march in these parades anymore. They are in their nineties. They were trained to be warriors and many of them were bivouacked right down the road where I lived in a place called Camp Shanks. They were shipped off to fight in places like Anzio, Antwerp, Cherbourg and Normandy.
They stood down two highly industrialized nations who had vowed to destroy us. Our enemies had conquered half the world before these men stepped in. It is 80 years since the end of that war. The Nations who vowed to destroy us are now our allies. We drive in their cars and visit their cities with casual impunity. All this in the span of a single lifetime.
Memorial Day is the day we honor those who did not make it back, the ones who never got to march in parades. The elderly men in the air-conditioned car come in their place. They accept our thanks with gratitude and a sense of, “I am not the one to thank today, but I will accept it on their behalf.”
John Adams once said, “I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. in order to give their Children a right to study painting, poetry, music, and architecture.”
The men in the air-conditioned car and the fallen comrades they represent studied war and practiced it mightily so that we might have the liberty to be philosophers, poets, bloggers.
The Challenge Today
Today we seem divided against ourselves. We suffer through the worst instincts and the basest passions. Some question the very essence of this great democratic endeavor. It is tempting to think in the midst of the social media prattle and political posturing that we have lost our way. I wonder what these men and the ghosts of their fallen comrades would think of all this? What would they ask of us, this generation of poets and philosophers? What should we say to them?
Yes, these are confusing and troubling times. The core values of our National Endeavor are being challenged not by an external enemy but by a political trend, an errant leader who prevaricates and proselytizes in defiance of our democratic institutions. I think of these men and women. The ones marching. The ones who can no longer march.
The ones who never got to come home and march before the vibrant symbols that drape the store fronts. These times are tough but what we face is easy compared to what they endured and accomplished in a single lifetime.
Thank you for your sacrifice. We the generation of poets and philosophers that you endowed, we are equal to this challenge. We will take it from here on this Glorious Memorial Day.