Memorial Day

Over the past several years, Georgia's school calendars have shifted so that students go to school in early to mid-August and get out for the summer before Memorial day. Sadly, this has taken one of the most important national holidays, Memorial Day, and left it unremembered in a school setting. All across Georgia students are blessed with St. Patrick's Day or Valentine's Day parties, bulletin boards, and special lesson plans. Those who have fallen are left forgotten.

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette reports on a five-year effort by the Bush administration to restore the "Memorial" to Memorial Day. The plan is to get everybody in the country to put down their beer, stop their shopping, and step away from the grill for a thirty-second moment of silence at 3:00pm. The plan to create a national moment of remembrance has not gone well. The presidential commission working on it can be found at www.remember.gov.

For a beautiful tribute to a fallen soldier, I would refer you to a very real Ernie Pyle column, "The Death of Captain Waskow." It can be found here. A brief excerpt:

AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944 - In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas.

Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had led his company since long before it left the States. He was very young, only in his middle twenties, but he carried in him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him.

"After my own father, he came next," a sergeant told me.

"He always looked after us," a soldier said. "He'd go to bat for us every time."

"I've never knowed him to do anything unfair," another one said.

I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought Capt. Waskow's body down. The moon was nearly full at the time, and you could see far up the trail, and even part way across the valley below. Soldiers made shadows in the moonlight as they walked.

Dead men had been coming down the mountain all evening, lashed onto the backs of mules. They came lying belly-down across the wooden pack-saddles, their heads hanging down on the left side of the mule, their stiffened legs sticking out awkwardly from the other side, bobbing up and down as the mule walked.

I encourage you to read the rest.

I leave you with my "most viewed" picture at my Flickr account. I took it this past Spring while I was visiting family in south Georgia. The picture is of my son kneeling in front of a memorial at Georgia Veterans State Park. The stone above the water is inscribed, "In honor of those who have served." While the picture is unposed, my son was not in fact overcome with patriotic zeal; he just wanted to look at the water. That being said, I think the picture communicates the idea of Memorial Day.




Peace