Of many poignant Memorial Day memories I have experienced, perhaps the most moving happened over a decade ago. My wife, daughter, and I were touring England. We visited the university city of Cambridge on our Memorial Day.
There is nothing quite like the solemnity and unique quietude that pervades the consecrated atmosphere of military cemeteries. Those of you who have visited Arlington National Cemetery know what I am talking about. I have never visited the vast cemetery at Normandy, France, where 9,387 Americans are buried, but friends who have visited that hallowed place have been moved to tears. These consecrated places touch the soul. One can palpably feel a sense of nearness to those souls whose human remains are buried there.
Over the course of our country’s history, tens of thousands of Americans—most of them young and with the potential for decades of life still ahead of them—have given their lives in military service to our country. Some were killed by enemy fire; others, by the horrifically named “friendly fire.” Some perished while engaged in training activities—everything from an aircraft malfunctioning to the case of a fellow who was in boot camp with my Pop in 1923. In a moment of levity, this young man jokingly jumping to attention, jammed the butt of his rifle to the ground, and was instantly killed when the rifle discharged a bullet into his head. Many other servicemen have perished from diseases, such as the masses of doughboys killed by typhus in the trenches of World War I.
As we pause this Memorial Day to remember and honor those American military personnel who made the ultimate sacrifice, let us also remember the principles and ideas they were willing to die for. The common thread was a moral commitment to defeat aggression, oppression, and tyranny so that people could live as free human beings in independent countries, rather than as slaves or dehumanized drones in some conquering dictator’s top-down central plan.
Think about the Americans buried in the Cambridge cemetery: Why were they fighting over there? It was to liberate not only England but also Western Europe from Nazi conquest and brutality. Mission accomplished.
Sadly, though, not all of Europe was liberated. Tired of war, American leaders left the liberation of all of Europe unfinished. We acquiesced in the Soviet domination of multiple central European countries where the people languished in a dismal twilight of a dreary existence under the suffocating rule of various socialist stooges propped up by the Soviet Union.
If you haven’t seen it, I recommend the recent Netflix series “Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War.” The most memorable scenes were in Episode 6 when the Berlin Wall came down. The utter jubilation of long-suffering populations finally regaining their freedom from tyranny was exceedingly moving. It was the same joy felt by the victorious allies and liberated countries at the end of World War II in 1945. Better late than never, they say.
Our servicemen who perished in World War II would have rejoiced with those central Europeans. Indeed, it was so that millions of people could experience the joys and blessings of liberty that many tens of thousands of American servicemen and women gave their lives.
And I feel that all those American heroes would be rooting for the beleaguered Ukrainians today. The Ukrainians could have taken the easy way out and submitted to Russian domination, but, like the great American patriot and founding father Patrick Henry, they have embraced the heroic maxim, “Give me liberty or give me death!”
Currently, although American military personnel are stationed in over 100 countries around the world, they are not engaged in combat.
The hope is that their presence will deter hostilities. Have we arrived at a stage of human development where there will no longer be occasion for American soldiers and sailors to pay the ultimate sacrifice? As splendid and alluring as that prospect may be to contemplate, a realistic look at the world around us shows how unlikely that scenario is. As long as individuals like Putin, Xi, Khamenei, Kim, and who-knows-how-many lesser autocrats inhabit our world, it is virtually inevitable that additional Americans will be called upon sooner or later to give their lives in military service to our country.
This Memorial Day, as we honor the memory of those who already have given their lives in military service to our country, let us offer a prayer of benediction and thanks for those who will follow in their footsteps. God bless them all.
