My earliest memories of Memorial Day are of the annual parade in my hometown of Perrysburg, Ohio. It was an opportunity for the community to come together to honor the service of its veterans. And I am old enough to remember when the veterans leading the parade were from World War I, marching as erect as their bent frames would allow.
We kids would get to join in the parade at the tail end and ride all the way to the city's main cemetery about a mile from downtown. By the time we arrived, the excitement and noise of the parade had given way to quiet reverence as the gathers listened to a member of the clergy give a benediction and a speaker or two invoked the memory of the fallen. Not being much for speeches at that age, my buddies and I would wander the cemetery looking at the gravestones of veterans from wars past as far back as the Civil War.
This memory was jogged when I heard an interview on NPR's Talk of the Nation with military historian Victor Davis Hanson recalling the times he had visited battlefields or war memorials. He made the point that it was the sacrifice of men (and now women) on such battlefields in wars at home and abroad who made our lives today possible. We know this cognitively but I doubt we know it at the gut level.
Since only a tiny minority of our population has served in the military, for many of us one of the few connections to the military we have, aside from what we see on television, are memorials to those who sacrificed for our cause. Too often these memorials are part of the scenery, not part of our consciousness.
Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of soldiers who serve do come home but few come home unchanged. For so many years we thought that post-traumatic stress syndrome was something only soldiers in Vietnam suffered. Not true. As Dr. Johathan Shay, a staff psychiatrist at a VA hospital in Boston and MacArthur Fellow, has written so eloquently in his books,every soldier in every war since the Trojan War (and before that too) is subject to it. Homer taught us that men cannot experience suffering such as soldiers experience in war and remain unaltered.
One passage about war that I have often quoted comes from Captain Lionel Ferguson, who served in the British Army during the "Great War." Reflecting years after the Armistice, Captain Ferguson wrote: "For the first time in our lives we [veterans] have known the meaning of 'Hunger,' 'Thirst,' 'Dirt,' 'Death' and other privations. We, I think, have all known the meaning of the word 'Fear' as we have never seen it... We who went through it know that those at home never did realize the work that 'The Solider' was asked to do."
Men and women who serve in war do so as a gift to the rest of us.
Most of us will use that gift as a time for a family get-together or an extra day around the house. Nothing wrong in that but let's remember the reason for this day. It is because others -- from the days of Lexington and Concord through Gettysburg, Chateau-Thierry, Guadalcanal, Normandy, the Ia Drang Valley, Baghdad and now Kandahar -- have put their lives on hold, some permanently, for the freedoms we take for granted.
First posted WashingtonPost.com/On Leadership 5.28.10
[ add comment ] permalink We kids would get to join in the parade at the tail end and ride all the way to the city's main cemetery about a mile from downtown. By the time we arrived, the excitement and noise of the parade had given way to quiet reverence as the gathers listened to a member of the clergy give a benediction and a speaker or two invoked the memory of the fallen. Not being much for speeches at that age, my buddies and I would wander the cemetery looking at the gravestones of veterans from wars past as far back as the Civil War.
This memory was jogged when I heard an interview on NPR's Talk of the Nation with military historian Victor Davis Hanson recalling the times he had visited battlefields or war memorials. He made the point that it was the sacrifice of men (and now women) on such battlefields in wars at home and abroad who made our lives today possible. We know this cognitively but I doubt we know it at the gut level.
Since only a tiny minority of our population has served in the military, for many of us one of the few connections to the military we have, aside from what we see on television, are memorials to those who sacrificed for our cause. Too often these memorials are part of the scenery, not part of our consciousness.
Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of soldiers who serve do come home but few come home unchanged. For so many years we thought that post-traumatic stress syndrome was something only soldiers in Vietnam suffered. Not true. As Dr. Johathan Shay, a staff psychiatrist at a VA hospital in Boston and MacArthur Fellow, has written so eloquently in his books,every soldier in every war since the Trojan War (and before that too) is subject to it. Homer taught us that men cannot experience suffering such as soldiers experience in war and remain unaltered.
One passage about war that I have often quoted comes from Captain Lionel Ferguson, who served in the British Army during the "Great War." Reflecting years after the Armistice, Captain Ferguson wrote: "For the first time in our lives we [veterans] have known the meaning of 'Hunger,' 'Thirst,' 'Dirt,' 'Death' and other privations. We, I think, have all known the meaning of the word 'Fear' as we have never seen it... We who went through it know that those at home never did realize the work that 'The Solider' was asked to do."
Men and women who serve in war do so as a gift to the rest of us.
Most of us will use that gift as a time for a family get-together or an extra day around the house. Nothing wrong in that but let's remember the reason for this day. It is because others -- from the days of Lexington and Concord through Gettysburg, Chateau-Thierry, Guadalcanal, Normandy, the Ia Drang Valley, Baghdad and now Kandahar -- have put their lives on hold, some permanently, for the freedoms we take for granted.
First posted WashingtonPost.com/On Leadership 5.28.10
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