Last Living WW I Veteran Coming to Kansas City Kansas City Star Frank Woodruff Buckles, 107, is scheduled to fly by private plane to Kansas City from his home in West Virginia.
Early Releases Sought in L.A. Jails to Make Room for Memorial Day Arrests Los Angeles Times In seeking an emergency court order, Assistant Sheriff Charles Walters says there's concern arrests during the three-day holiday could put Orange County jails over the acceptable inmate capacity and endanger inmates.
How to Grill Green on Memorial Day Chicago Tribune A paper invite to your barbecue can be great, but hosts can save a little green by transforming that invite into an environmentally friendly e-mail, Evite or phone call.
May 26, 2008
Today is Memorial Day in the U.S. Unfortunately, for many, it's just another day off from work and the start of the summer grilling season. So in our ongoing effort to engage, educate and entertain, I think a little history is in order.
As best as anyone can figure, Memorial Day began as Decoration Day in the 1860s, to remember the dead from the Civil War, which still accounts for the single largest number of American casualties.
It became an official holiday on May 5, 1868, when Gen. John Logan, national commander of the Army of the Republic, issued General Order No. 11. It was first observed a few weeks later on May 30.
Of course, in some parts of the country, the "late unpleasantness" was still too fresh in their minds. The Confederate states had their own day of remembrance for their soldiers. Some - Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina - still have their own day for their soldiers who wore gray.
It wasn't until the National Holiday Act of 1971 that it became an official three-day weekend. By then, it had changed from Decoration Day into Memorial Day, a day set aside to remember all of our war dead, not just those from the Civil War.
The change took place during World War I, the first of the 20th century's "war to end all wars." Inspired by John McCrae's 1915 poem, "In Flanders Fields," American Moina Michael wrote her own poem:
We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.
That's when we started wearing poppies. Madam Guerin, visiting from France, was so inspired that she went back home and started selling artificial red poppies to raise money for French and Belgian children who were made orphans by the Great War.
Since the 1950s, soldiers from the 3rd U.S. Infantry, "The Old Guard," have been placing small American flags at each of the 260,000 headstones at Arlington National Cemetery. They then stand guard, 24 hours a day, over the weekend, to ensure that each flag remains standing.
The Boy Scouts place flags on the 150,000 graves at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis. For the past 10 years, the scouts have also gone to the cemeteries in Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park in Virginia and placed a candle at each of the more than 15,000 gravesites.
These are all moving tributes, to be sure, but, for the most part, isolated incidents. I think they remember their war dead better in Europe. I'm not exactly sure why.
Maybe it's because with the exception of the past 60 years, they've been at each other's throats for so long. Lost not just scores of young men, but entire generations.
The most moving war memorial ceremony I've witnessed doesn't take place every year, but every day. It's at the Menin Gate in Ypres (pronounced "Wipers," by the Tommies). The Menin Gate is a giant arch, big enough for cars to drive through, made of reinforced concrete faced with Euville stone and red brick. It sits astride the Menin Road near the edge of town. Carved into it are the names of the 54,896 Commonwealth soldiers who died fighting near here.
(The names of another 34,984 soldiers who couldn't fit on the gate are listed on tablets at nearby Tyne Cot Cemetery.)
"The Last Post," was the idea of the Superintendent of the Ypres Police, Mr. P. Vandenbraambussche. Every night at 8 p.m. everything - and I mean everything - stops. Locals who live nearby come out on their porches and stand quietly, a tribute to the soldiers who once fought for their land.
A police honor guard marches out to the square in front of the gate and a trumpeter plays "The Last Post," a bugle call used at military funerals, memorials and times of remembrance. It symbolizes the end of the soldier's day and, in this case, that the soldier has finished his duty and can rest in peace.
I've never seen a more fitting tribute.
But maybe you have. I'd love to hear about them, and be talked out of my belief that - in the U.S. anyway - Memorial Day has become just another day off from work.
The War for Vietnam vietnam.vassar.edu America's longest war ended more than two decades ago, yet a number of significant and important questions remain unanswered: What was the nature of the modern Vietnamese revolution? How can we explain the American intervention? Why did the war drag on so long?
The Great War www.pitt.edu It was "The War To End All Wars,"- a senseless slaughter that set the stage for the bloodiest century in human history.
American Civil War Homepage sunsite.utk.edu In his 2nd Inaugural Address, Lincoln said, "...but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came."
My maternal and paternal grandfathers fought in WW1 (The Great War), one of them suffered horrend...
— ExPat
May 26, 2008 2:58 AM
How will you spend Memorial Day?
43% 14% 14% 29%
When I was a teenager, I took a fascinating class in the daily life of Civil War soldiers. This class involved a lot of re-enactments but also a lot of study of the geography and politics of the time. The thing that stands out most in my head is when the teacher said, "More Americans died in the Civil War than in all other wars put together."
Today, I am not sure if that remains true as the death toll continues to rise.
I wish I could talk Mr. Peterman out of his belief that Memorial Day is not celebrated for its initial intended purpose anywhere near enough. But, alas, I share it. What I hope is that that may become one of the few good things to arise from the state of war in which we now find ourselves. Let those who did there best for us continue to remind us to do our best for them.
I am reminded of the final verse of Robert Service's poem, "The March of the Dead":
"There was music, mirth and sunshine, but some eyes shone with regret;
And while we stun with cheers our homing braves,
O God, in Thy great mercy, let us nevermore forget
The graves they left behind, the bitter graves."
My maternal and paternal grandfathers fought in WW1 (The Great War), one of them suffered horrendous injuries, My maternal grandmother had four brothers who died in WW1, her surviving brother was crippled for life and was disabled by mustard gas. My "home" town was almost without men at the end of that war.....all dead at places like the Somme, Ypres, Flannders.
WW2 was no different. My father lost half his stomach. His first cousin and an uncle died in naval battles. Other family members died or lost body parts in Europe or Asia. Others died in German bomber raids.
Then my time came. Not in Europe, where I was born, but in Vietnam. I watched buddies cut down in my presence in Hue City, or places called Dodge City, Happy Valley, the Central Highlands, Hill 55, and a special part of hell called Landing Zone Ross and Landing Zone rattlesnake.
I was shot down in a chopper and ended up in a naval hospital in Da Nang. I got dysentry and malaria and went from 185 lbs to 123 lbs and then went to the closest field hospital where I "died" and came back to life. When I recovered, I went back to the jungle. My choice. Then my lower left leg got gangene from a bad cut. The day I left Vietnam I spent the morning fighting Viet Cong at a bridge over a small river in Hue Sam. Three days later, after a stop in Okinawa, I got off an airplane at LAX.
I came home. Just like my grandfathers, just like my father. One way or another you come home.
I don't "celebrate" Memorial Day. I don't belong to the American Legion or the Veterans of Foreign Wars. I don't go to parades. Memorial Day is with me everyday. It's inside me.
My youngest son, who is 17, tells me he intends to join the Marines when he's 18 (in October). Four generations, four wars.....when he comes home after six years of duty in 2014 it will be the 100 year anniversary of my grandfather joining the 9th Lancers. I'm not sure there'll be a celebration.
Memorial Day was watching my grandfather live everyday after 18 surgeries to unsuccessfully remove schrapnell from his body and 8 surgeries to save his eyesight from the same schrapnell. I would wonder if I could live like that. I wonder now why I was lucky enough not to have to find out if I could live like that. I now think about my son, and his choices.
Mostly, I'm grateful for being alive, being fit and healthy, and being capable of love, romance, passion, and compassion. But mostly I'm grateful I'm not "forever 19 years old" like the guys who died on Landing Zone Ross and Landing Zone Rattlesnake and other long forgotten places with names no one remembers.
As I've gotten older my passion for life has grown. Memorial Day is a time to give thanks, honor the dead, be grateful, and then go out and enjoy that BBQ and embrace old friends and new friends.
Why? Because you can and because someone died so you could have that BBQ and enjoy new friends. Be grateful you get to grow older, you could still be 19 (and quite dead!)
more on the honor rollI am sitting here in tears, having just read ExPat's post. What I will take with me through the day is the notion of gratitude for being alive, and thankfulness that those who have suffered and died did so for me and my family.
If you will indulge me, I'd like to share another poem, this one entitled "I Was There the Day the War Was Won:
They’ll never teach you this in school, my son, so listen well.
I’ve come straight from the field at Waterloo.
Full half my barracks mates have gone to Heaven or to Hell
As many soldiers there are bound to do.
Your history master will declare the deaths my comrades died
A grand and glorious service to the crown.
He will bid your generation “join the army! Fight with pride!”
While he safely sips his tea in Chester town.
Your Oxford lecturers will drum it through your head, my son,
We were fearless, stout and bold, that noble day.
But don’t forget that I was there the day the war was won,
And I remember it a different way.
I remember scores of men and boys, besmeared in soot and mud.
You nigh could see the anguish in the air.
And each grew sickly at the smell of one another’s blood.
Let the history books record that if they dare.
Beside a battle lost, the saddest thing’s a battle won.
And, lo, I heard from deep within their tents,
The moan of men who slowly pay the debt they owe the gun,
Whose names will ne’er be carved on monuments.
The dwarfish Corsican was beaten back. Praise God ‘tis so.
And with our victory, a peace was made.
But any school or university to which you go
Will conveniently forget a price was paid.
But I will not forget, just thank God for my every breath,
And be grateful every day I see the sun.
I will not call it sweet to serve my country with my death,
For I was there the day the war was won.
The debt that I, that we, that all of our past and future generations owe to our brave soldiers who have sacrificed so much for us can never be repaid, but must always be remembered, respected, and never taken for granted.
Just like anything else in America, over time the meaning of things fade and we are left with "just another day off of work." September 11th is a prime example of this... yeah we know it happened and yeah we paid our $1.06 for the tacky magnet on the back of our fuel guzzling vehicles! But the flags on the porch have come down, bonding of left and right wings in congress have ended, 9/11 comes and passes each year with maybe a 20 second spot on the news! Wars have come and gone, but America thinks... "it didn't happen to me, so lets just BBQ and enjoy the day off from work." Of course Memorial day were I work is just another day of the week... there is no celebrating, enjoying "just another day off from work." It’s merely another Monday! I could rant on this topic all day, but that’s business, and the money that America so desperately loves needs to be made! As I sit here at work, I do think of what this day is truly about. Of course being at work is something I completely disagree with, but here I am... and I am here because just like the soldiers that have kept our country safe I am keeping the company I work for alive and prosperous, for now I am content with that!
ExPat I admire your story and I am honored to know you even though it may be on the cyber level! I am only 23 and am very thankful for your service and the service of your family and of course the future service of your son! Thank you!
Spinner said...
Those of us that are older, I guess, all have family stories to tell but ExPat, yours is a winner. My family experiences were a bit happier as we haven't lost any to the actual wars themselves. I guess I have really taken that for granted and your story is a real wake-up call. We have war stories of ancestors from the Cival War through WWII. The next generation was all female and my husband was working in top secret research for the Defense Dept. when he was called up for the Berlin crisis so he didn't have to go. But my father's WWII wooden foot locker is now a coffee table with the pith helmet he wore in the So. Pacific sitting on it, still stained with his sweat. Inside, is a ditty bag full of letters sent home by his much older brother from the WWI trenches in France. He made it through that experience only to come home and drown in the Ohio River a month later.
I listen to a lot of talking books while I do my fiber-art thing. Right now, I am listening to America, the Last Best Hope, by Wm. Bennett. I have been listening to a lot of early American history done by The Teaching Company, and thought this would be a good adjunct to those. We do need to be re-awakened to details of our history to better appreciate what we have and the arguments that went on in deciding our direction. Maybe some of the discussions of today would be better understood if put into an historic contex... If I went on much more, I would have to bring in that band I used yesterday and they have asked for the day off. So I will quit. Anyway, this is KY and nobody around here would care. That would mean some interest in education...
MACKDADDY1 said...
My heart bleeds with the deepest, most sincere gratitude and admiration in honor of the men and women, past and present, who have so unselfishly given and who will give their lives in so many ways all to protect us and our rights. My Father and five Uncles served in combat during WWII, and my brother was in MI during Vietnam. I am proud of their participation and my Father and brothers purple hearts, but as simplistic as this sounds (and is) I still don't understand why any of them had to fight. I choose to memorialize them each and every day...NOT just one day a year.
A little note back to Mattofyrk:
Did you notice (most likely you did) that IN THE POLL above there is no option for "working". I too, am at work and I can't say I am missing the grandeur of cold hotdogs and hamburgers and screaming 4 year olds all jumping on trampolines with dogs barking and babies crying. I love family but today, I prefer pouring my heart into work and staying away from the chaos and observing the true meaning of this day.
MACKDADDY1 said...
To ExPat:
Thank you for the passion and for sharing your experience with us on Peterman's Eye. The pain and suffering was and will forever be embedded into your heart and soul as well as mine. Please know that even though we can never bring back the lost lives...there are some of us who are truly indebted to you and all like you. I couldn't let the opportunity slip by without acknowledging your post. May God bless you and all who have given sooooo much.
Have a wonderful day.
South-Side John's eloquent expression of gratitude puts me in mind of yet another quote (this one is shorter, I promise). The late great Winston Churchill spoke of soldiers' efforts and said: "Never have so many owed so much to so few."
On a day such as this, . . . after listening to the soldier’s stories, reading words such as those you all have written, thinking of all who have served their country, their sacrifices and the tremendous loss to their families, the terrible experiences and horrors they have beheld that will never allow them to see the world in quite the same way, ever again; if this doesn’t put the everyday challenges that we face back into their proper perspective and for at least a day, enable us to truly appreciate that what we have was gained at a price without measure, then I truly am at a loss for words and deeply saddened.
I think that for too many, today may just be another day off, but certainly not everyone. I’m making sure that my sons and grandson understand and appreciate what today is all about. I still have hope.
My dear South-Side John, I never realized you had a grandson. I had a picture of you in my head that was a bit on the young side. You recently mentioned having retired early and it evoked images of a clever investor who had made his fortune by the time he was 40. Well, I guess that's always the way with people you meet online.
Let me try and put a positive spin on this "just another day off" problem with which we are all taking issue. Isn't it nice that we are ABLE to think of this day as just another day off thanks to the blood, sweat, and tears, of our men and women in uniform.
About four years ago, my wife and I spent a weekend down in Washington D.C. and visited the newly opened World War II Memorial on the mall. We both agreed that it had taken our vote for the title of the most beautiful and moving memorial of the bunch. Several people, weary from long walks, were resting their feet in the water of the memorial pool. Children were wading and playing in it. My first reaction was to think "Oh, how disrespectful!" But, as I watched and thought about the meaning of that war and the men who had served, my attitude changed. It occurred to me that this was what they had faught for. While Hitler was trying to take over the world and Japan was sending heat down our western border, the people in our armed forces gave their lives so that children could play freely and their parents could rest without any sense of fear or dread. Soon, the free and peaceful delight of the moment seemed to me to be the most fitting tribute our fighting men and women could receive.
DreadPirateRoberts,
I like your imagery of the children playing in the water of the memorial very much! That is indeed what was one of the sought after outcomes of all those brave soldiers who fought so valiantly in WWII. That and a desire to witness it first hand of course.
What really saddens me is that those who fought that war probably believed they were engaged in the war to end all wars. I just hope we as a society asks the right questions and comes up with THE answers as to how to protect the joy and innocence of the children splashing around in that pool.
p.s., Please feel free to hold onto that "younger" image you had of me, . . . I insist. I retired when I was 51 'cos it seemed like a good idea at the time and still does. My age, well let's just say I'm a square root baby, I was born 7/7/49, not too long after my father was home for quite a spell because of a labor dispute at the Stock Yards. My father, by the way, was shot in the "War against Prohibition", I won't say which side he was on, but he's my Hero!
I teach at a military school and this morning they read the names of the cadets that gave their lives in all conflicts since World War I. That was followed by Taps, and a 21 gun salute. Then there was a speech by a former cadet who flew bombers with my great uncle out of Italy. I wore a poppy all day for my great grandfather who, although he didn't fall in combat, certainly lost his livelihood and sanity to it. Even the girls, who aren't part of the military system, understood. Although we didn't get the day off school, taking two hours to remember those brave men and women was incredibly moving. I for one am glad to have experienced it.
To South-Side John:
I love the "square root" reference. And we're both July babies; I was born 7/30/74. I can easily hold onto that younger image because, indeed, I pictured you in your current decade. Clearly, you and/or your sons simply got an earlier start than many of the current generation do. I was 30 when my daughter was born.
The notion of a "war to end all wars" is, of course, splendidly romantic. Alas, history does not bear it out. I mean this, not just in the sense that there have been other wars since WWII. That much is obvious. But, in fact, if you look at all the thousands of years of recorded history, there is a grand total of 23 years in which no war is recorded as taking place somewhere in the world. Mankind has warred with itself for ALL but 23 years of its entire history! I flatter myself that I'm an optimist but even I do not believe the end of this tragic pattern is likely to come in my lifetime.
DeadPirateRoberts,
I'm afraid I agree with your belief, the questions are more complex and the answers are more elusive. Whatever happened to the good old days when there was just one or two evil empires trying to dominate the world.
To ExPat: Greetings from NC. Sir, I have been reading your post for about two months now and I look forward daily to observe your thoughts. Todays post was, for me, a very emotional read. I just want to say thank you.