These days I tend to wonder how many more of any holiday that our republic will survive to see, but this one is the hardest to come to grips with. Memorial Day is the day to honor those who fell fighting to preserve the republic and if Memorial Day falls, that's dishonoring every one of them. Every one of them gave themselves, their lives, their futures, for something bigger than themselves.
It's not just "the greatest generation" that saved the west in the all out war of WWII; it's all of them, from those we know of fighting in the first battles of the Revolution on April 19, 1775, (commemorated as Patriots' Day but some states shift the date to get a Monday Holiday) to those who were lost in Bumbling Biden's disastrous abandonment of Afghanistan, and those lost since then. We include losses from training accidents as well as actual enemy action.
For most people, Memorial Day is the semi-official Start of Summer, and it's a rare year indeed that it doesn't feel fully like summer by Memorial Day around here. The day tends to be marked by barbecues, trips out on the boat, or other outdoors activities. Let me join the chorus of folks saying that while you're enjoying your day, take a moment to remember or think of and thank those who gave their all in service to us. The ones who don't get to mark the holiday with us.
I say that in the belief that those who made that sacrifice wouldn't hold it against us to have a little fun on their day.
In the life of this blog, now 15 years, there's only a small number of
pictures I've reposted many times. Two of them are Memorial Day pictures
and I just have to conclude they hit me in a way that others haven't.
I'm going to repost those today.
The first, at least to me, is the more unexpected. The main interest in this photo isn't a spouse or a child; it's the fallen veteran's dog. A dog just isn't generally expected to have feelings this deep.
In a final act of loyalty, Hawkeye, the dog of slain Navy SEAL U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Jon T. Tumilson walked up to his fallen master’s casket during the funeral in Rockford, Iowa, and then laid mournfully down beside the body for the rest of the proceedings [Note: Petty Officer Tumilson was one of the 30 killed in Afghanistan in the shoot down of Extortion 17 which the families blamed squarely on the Obama administration - SiG]
Far too large a portion of the Deep State could use Hawkeye's loyalty.
There are signs that's improving; only time will tell if it's temporary or
not. The others could use to ponder showing less humanity than a
dog.
The second one is a person, the widow of an Army Sargent buried at Arlington
National Cemetary.
If I read that correctly, Ms. Sayne was visiting her husband's grave when taps sounded from another funeral in process, causing her to almost roll up into a little ball. Her pain is palpable in the picture.
Memorial Day is personal. I am blessed to not have lost friends or relatives in the wars and "actions" that have taken place in my 70+ years in this country, but that doesn't mean I don't see things like this and feel the pain, along with the gratitude and appreciation.
Around Castle Graybeard, the weather has taken a definite turn to the possibly bad side, with the chances of rain stepping up quite a bit. Today's storms brought "half-dollar sized hail" around the county and that's a possibility for tomorrow as well. That really just means that the cooking has to be indoors rather than in a smoker.
Pain and Honor.
ReplyDeleteA Medic salutes.
Last year, that being 2024, was the year of the last USS Arizona death. The date of the last WWII veteran, or factory worker, or any who were adults during WWII is rapidly coming up.
ReplyDeleteAnd we must remember the shattered bodies and minds that came back from the wars, those who 'died' but came back as husks.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
ReplyDeleteNow we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
I am second generation retired Air Force. Memorial Day is a somber day in my household. There is nothing going on the grill or going to the beach.
ReplyDeleteBe something else, a pretty good world without all the treasure and blood wasted in the name of fattening bank accounts and acquiring natural resources for their own, for a certain class of "people."
ReplyDeleteMaybe one day, I pray.
The psychopaths running the world must be having trouble finding good Solders, did you see the latest recruitment adds? Yeah. Almost every Solder in them are White Men, and the narrator, think its SD Hengsworth, (however its spelled), is going on about no more DEI and other utterly unacceptable deranged things they where previously up to, Happy Memorial Day.
Yeah.