Tomorrow is Memorial Day, a day when we honor the men and women who died in the service of the United State.
It is somehow lost in the buzz of a Pre-Summer Holiday with picnic, special sales and the like.
Tomorrow I will go in a little corner, alone and for a small moment pay a personal tribute for those who died for this country and for other countries as well. I will remember a few friends who will never grow old and I will also remember those they left behind. Mother, Fathers, Grandparents, Brothers, Sisters, Wives, Girlfriends, Sons, Daughters and Loved ones who will for ever have an empty place in their life and their heart. I will also have a thought for those who came back, changed forever, in their bodies and their minds. I will have a thought of sorrow for those whose Brothers or Sisters or Wives or Husbands or Lovers or Dads or Moms came back totally changed, embittered and angry forever. I will grieve for those whose loved ones left with immense love and wishes and came back a stranger. And again tell myself: There got to be a better way to settle differences. Can we ever learn?
May they rest in Peace.
If there is a God, may he gave us the wisdom to handle our lives as people and Nations in such a way that my loved ones and yours, Children, Grand Children and the Children of their Children will never have to go in arms way. If we can accept that wisdom and act accordingly it would be the best homage we could pay to those we honor on Memorial Day.
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About Me
- Popcorn
- I was born in Limoges (France) in 1942, at the pick of the tourist season! Joined the French Navy at 18 and served for 10 years in Djibouti, Madagascar and Tahiti. I served on an Aircraft Carrier the Lafayette (Ex USN Langley CVL27), a Mine Sweeper La Dieppoise (ex HMCS Chaleur, now an artificial reef in New Caledonia)and a Cruiser De Grasse. Those ship are long gone and now plow only the oceans of the memories of my youth. Finally I served in the French Nuclear Experimentation Center of the Pacific as a Radiological Protection Technician in the SMSR part of the CEPA. My outstanding and befuddled services in that position earned me the post of Nth level flunky of a squadron of mothballed Minesweeper in Toulon France!. In 1969 I made one of the best decisions of my life in leaving the French Navy. I met and married a wonderfull five foot two firecracker from South Dakota. We have three children and three wonderfull grandchildren. We live in Nixa, MO.
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Nadau
3 comments:
Nice to hear from a veteran who actually understands the true meaning of this holiday. It makes me sad that so many people confuse patriotism and respect for those who died for us with shameless jingoism. I left our local Redondo Beach celebration feeling very berated for my political views. Normally, I'm okay with that, but that day, it made me sad.
Those soldiers died so that one person could be a Republican, another could be a Democrat and a third could be whatever the hell he or she wanted. God bless them for that.
I always look with a lot of suspicion at people who mix politics with rites of remembrance, As much as I am proud to have gained citizenship in this country and can be at time pretty emotional about civic celebration I have a hard time with some of the so called Civic Leaders or other who drape themselves in a flag or try to steal the sacrifice of other for their own benefit. Those who died would more likely have chosen to live if a choice would have been available. It is not as much that they gave their life away, but instead their life was stolen from them. People who survived owe to those who perished to strive to push farther in direction of a better world for all. People who got killed or maimed physically or emotionally did not put it on the line for the benefit of anything else but to see the evil of war and armed conflict go away. All the friends I lost had dreams and I cannot remember a single one whose dream was the supremacy of political party. On the night of Memorial Day a few of them visited me in a tortured dream to remind me of that and every single one of them looked awesomely taller than any “flag on the lapel” pulpit thumper I have ever seen.
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