http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...emetery-ahead-Memorial-Day.html#ixzz1vuXXBQtZ This story will say it all.
Memorial Day to me is tough. 11 of my 40 man platoon are on the wall. We survivors will meet in Kokomo in September and have another memorial day. Where I live... it's very rural. I'm out in the sticks. Small town USA... except there's no town. I have a post office... but it's not in the town I live in even though it's named after the town. LOL We may have 75 people in what they call the town. I live out of town about 2 miles. Anyway, the town will place a flag on all veteran graves this weekend. My lot has an old cemetary adjacent to it. No longer any burials there... but there are headstones from way back.. civil war and all. Maybe 50 headstones. I even have one relative who is buried on my lot. His grave is recorded on my deed. He was my Great uncle. His wife is buried about 10 feet away from him in the cemetary borders. His wife died before him. He there in stipulated to the family he wanted to be buried separate but near her. He said he fought with her all his life and he didn't wish to do so in the afterlife. It's in the family archives. LOL I live in the town of Vienna. MY "TOWN" is Blossvale. The town of Vienna will visit all the remote cemetarys and place flags on Veteran graves. Not sure how may of those cemetarys there are..... but there are many... just like my little remote one. The town also comes by and mows the place. Kind of nice. I have grand parents and great grand parents in the cemetary. When I moved into my new house I went up to mow it and the town was there doing it. Some people still care. We lost a lot. The highest KIA by MOS was armored Cavalry crewman. We lost 27 percent in Vietnam. Here's a link. It's also in the National Archives. My company lost 82 in it's time in Vietnam. http://www.ktroop.com/HonorRoll/casualty.pdf
Memorial Day reminds me of the friends and battles won, Edward J Essex couldn't pass the Navy's PT Test because he was sickly, so we came up with an ideal to change clothes. Knowing that it would be a lot of people taking the test all I had to do was remember his SSN. And Pas the test as I had to get in trouble to get division sidewalk. Essex had Leukemia the last time I seen him he was in the sickbay of the USS San Jose AFS 7 were stationed on the same ship together. He earned the nickname Sleepy. He told me he was dying I told him he wasn't I kept trying to tell him he wasn't dying. I yelled at him and angrily smacked him hard on his back and left him in sickbay. He was flown to the USS Ranger CV 61 that was the last time I seen him from the side of our ship and he waved 3 months later we found out he died. I've never forgot he wanted me to go out with his sister Amy...I told him his family would kill him if he brought a Black Man home to date his sister a Red head... Or how about the 2 Marines that saved my *** by having ammunition on duty onboard the USS Alamo LSD 33 when I came across 5 Filipino Yard birds stealing food on the ship. For the life of me I can't remember their names but I have their pictures... Thank God for Marines! Operation Just Cause holding the bloody hand of military member.... Desert Storm listening to the F-18's call out to each other from a successful mission on the bridge of the USS Philippine Sea CG 58 to Michael Scott Speicher (July 12, 1957– January 17, 1991) When one pilot shoutted WOW!! did you see that fireball! What was that! Silence all flights call in after each plane called in one call sign they repeated time and time again silence...LTJ Henke reached up and turn off the radio on the bridge that's when I realized that people were dying it wasn't funny it wasn't a game it was about life and death. I could talk about the day before Desert Storm when the CNO was on board the ship to speak to us and said that he know many of you are scared and we may get hit with chemical weapons or an Excocet Missle but our training we see us through and if any man don't want to be here we offer you a way off the ship no man moved all stood tall... and yet we had a coward in our ranks that got down on his hands and knees begging him to get him off the ship before the war took place. and OS (Operation Specialist 2nd class) always talked he could wait to kick some azz on the mess decks but when the war was about to take place that coward tucked his tail ran EFFing Punk azz mutt! Now I work with people that look at VET's as nothing more than trash. those cowards that don't have the courage to fight, but have no problem in treating you like something worst. Those that do is nothing more than than that 2nd class on his hands and knees. Memorial Day is also about the war many of you never hear of.
Honor, respect and never forgetting what so many sacrificed for our freedom. Remembering being an American is not about me, it's about being apart something greater than me. Remembering that's what men before had for ideals about what America meant to them and many died or were wounded fighting for those ideals. These men were not the so called "job creators", they were men who worked in factories, our schools, plumbers, and every day working class men. They did not seek wealth nor were they creedie, they put family and country first. They fought together, died together and those who returned help build a great nation for us which now we all prosper.
I read this today and believe it best describes Memorial Day - "We come not to mourn our dead soldiers, but to praise them." Francis A. Walker.
I was watching a memorial day special on PBS from the Mall in D.C. I will be honest, I was a little taken aback by it. To me Memorial Day is about the ones who have made the ultimate sacrafice and as importantly the famies that are left behind to go on with their lives. The special focused too much on living veterans (of which I am one as well) and should be exclusively about the fallen. This is just my opinion.
My little town (Chatham) has a church service at the VFW, followed by a parade downtown to the cemetery where the local 4-Hers, boyscouts/girlscouts, youth groups and baseball teams place flowers by the marked veterans graves. We then parade back up town to the local monument, where all the names of veterans dating back to the revolutionary war who are buried in our cemetery or served in our post are read off, followed by a gun salute. Then a potluck picnic. The fire department does the traffic control and follows the parade with the squad just in case. Every once in awhile Normal Rockwell comes out and does a painting...
I remember those who died for Patrick Henry's grand vision. "I not not what others may choose, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" It is interesting he asked not for freedom but liberty. Those who pursue freedom rather than liberty will ultimately lose both. Liberty comes only by accepting that it may cost everything.
