Memorial Day places me in competing moods. On the one hand,
I look with nostalgia at my hometown, New Salem, in southwestern Pennsylvania . memorial
Day marked the start of summer, even if some school days were still ahead of
us. Our village had a parade every memorial day. A nearby junior high band
would play and pretty girls march in a drill line. We got popsicles at the
American Legion. We would walk to the sandstone memorial of the wars, and a
young man would play taps from a cemetery hill across the road, and its broken
notes would echo in our many hills. I did not know what people meant when they
spoke of a Gold Star mother. Later, the popsicles left a bitter taste in my
mouth, as I was an altar boy and helped serve far too many funerals for boys
coming home in a casket from Vietnam ,
some of whom had grabbed the treats at the Legion Hall. Men who never spoke of
war would speak a bit of it to me as they lined up for their drinks, as they
knew my father had served in the Merchant Marine and been twice wounded. Some
would talk with more than a hint of shame that their age did not permit them to
be in WWII, or that they had not seen combat. I admired their humility and
stoic reticence to speak of the horrors they witnessed and may well have
committed.
On the other hand, it seems to me that Christians must face
pacifism, even if they cannot accept it in the end. It odes seem to me that all
people of faith are called to mourn the dead, their lost futures, and the
ripples of pain and harm that touch need comfort. What brings out patriotism in
the face of war? Why does the word, hero, seem to apply best to someone in
combat? People risk their lives in other pursuits, but we rarely have parades
and festivals for them.
What is it about human beings that martial virtues arise,
but not in other areas? Why do acts of courage and sacrifice appear in wartime,
when they may be in little evidence at other times? The causes of war are rarely even close to
justifying the loss of soldiers. I was honored to help with a committal service
in a cemetery in St Louis
not long ago. The sheer number of flag topped graves was cause enough to take
my breath away.
For some time, at least since President Carter, the military
seemed far more reluctant to use troops than the civilian side of presidential
advisors. Those who have felt the strife of war are properly skittish about
putting the lives of soldiers on the line as symbols, statements, or yes I even
need. The new breed of radical politicians speaks so easily of death and
destruction because they have not faced it.
Memorials are to jog, or even create, memory. We don’t have
speeches often on this holiday, so the transmission of the histories is more
difficult. Back in Indiana ,
the graveyard at the Kingston Presbyterian church will have flowers placed on
every grave of the veterans buried there, but with special attention to those
who fell in battle. People who are close
with their money and their emotions will cut flowers from their garden to place
them. Many of them organize their planting so they can have flowers to place or
the graves, or they send children out into the fields and woods to seek out
wild flowers or blooms from shrubs and trees. An old man will speak good words
of the meaning of memorials and country, and a small knot of people of
different generations wil pile into cars on their way to a gathering or family
picnic. When the wind would rise, the fragrance of the flowers could be caught,
and the flags flutter over patriot graves. Some would return home to cry.
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