blackhawknj
05-24-2024, 06:59
Memorial Day is on us once again, and as has been the case for most of my 74 years on this planet, Young Americans (and I was one of them) have raised their right hands, promised to "support and defend the Constitution" and gone in Harm's Way.
My family has been little touched by the wars of the United States, few served, few lost. My mother told me my long gone paternal grandmother said she lost an uncle-or a great uncle, or a couple of them-at Gettysburg, Union troops, my mother mentioned a cousin by marriage who was MIA in the Bulge, that's all I know of.
The real meaning of Memorial Day has been summed up by Charles Johnson Post, a veteran of the Cuban Campaign of 1898, a rather minor affair compared to the Civil War and the bloodletting of the 20th Century. But as Post reminds us:
"Whether a man falls with 20,000 others in some grand battle or all by himself on a lonely outpost, he is a 100% casualty to himself. What more is there to give ?"
My family has been little touched by the wars of the United States, few served, few lost. My mother told me my long gone paternal grandmother said she lost an uncle-or a great uncle, or a couple of them-at Gettysburg, Union troops, my mother mentioned a cousin by marriage who was MIA in the Bulge, that's all I know of.
The real meaning of Memorial Day has been summed up by Charles Johnson Post, a veteran of the Cuban Campaign of 1898, a rather minor affair compared to the Civil War and the bloodletting of the 20th Century. But as Post reminds us:
"Whether a man falls with 20,000 others in some grand battle or all by himself on a lonely outpost, he is a 100% casualty to himself. What more is there to give ?"