Edited from Memorial Day, 2014

Happy Memorial Day

It's time to mourn them again, we who confine our mourning to government-sanctioned holidays. Today we mourn those who died at the hands of our enemies while defending our freedom, our rights, our traditions, our nation. Your right, in point of fact, to ignore their sacrifices and pursue the pleasures they paid for. But you won't do that, will you? Please?

I have written about this day before. Their sacrifices haunt me. All that I am and all that I have was paid for by men and women whom I never knew. 

Don't be afraid to laugh today, to enjoy, to love, to rest. The day is meant for that, too. That's why we fly our flags at half mast only until noon in their honor and at full mast thereafter to honor America. Oh, you didn't know that?

But remember them today, those who will never again visit us, never go on another picnic with us, never again kiss us. Once they were like us, and they wanted to.

In the last line of the movie The Bridges at Toko-Ri, RADM Tarrant (Fredric March) says, after a successful bombing raid that suffered heavy losses and while launching the next raid, "Where do we get such men?" Where, indeed?

Thank you. I remember. Every day.

____________________

If our soldiers are not overburdened with

money, it is not because they have a distaste

for riches; if their lives are not unduly long, it is

not because they are disinclined to longevity.

Sun Tzu