A Memorial Day Reflection

On courage, sacrifice, and gratitude to those who serve

Memorial Day Weekend has descended on Cape Cod. The charming outdoor mall that I frequent turned overnight from a modestly attended local outpost to a vacationer’s paradise. I went there this weekend for the pedestrian purposes of checking my mail at the Post Office and picking up a product at the pharmacy, and was stunned by the number of adults and children happily bounding about the usually serene walkways. I suppose I should be grateful that the joyful throngs come each summer to enjoy the town’s beauty and activities (and boost our economy), and mostly I am. But I also fight the urge to claim a proprietary interest in the tranquility of our quiet piece of coastal Americana. (And just after writing that sentence, one of my neighbors decided to power up a chain saw. Figures.)

Memorial Day is meant to be a sacred holiday, a time for remembering those members of the U.S. military who gave their lives in service to their country. It’s hard for a life-long civilian like me to understand the courage it takes to risk that ultimate sacrifice, a sacrifice that only a select few of us have volunteered to risk since the end of the Second World War. We lost tens of thousands of Americans in Vietnam, most of them conscripted. Every one of them, the drafted and the enlisted, deserves to be honored for their sacrifice and service.  But for the past half-century, our military has been an all-volunteer enterprise, and for those who have served as volunteers, the sacrifice begins with their decision to put themselves in harm’s way for a higher purpose. That decision reflects a courage that most of us ordinary humans can only imagine.

So, this morning, for the first time since moving to my little town, I attended the town’s Memorial Day ceremony held at the town park. There, along with dozens of my fellow townspeople, I pledged allegiance to the flag, listened quietly to the singing of the national anthem, heard from several speakers who honored the town’s fallen heroes, bowed my head in opening and closing prayers, and listened to the haunting sound of a single bugle playing taps. I saw a bald man wearing a beige tee shirt commemorating his son, a marine killed in battle in Fallujah in 2008. I heard a retired Coast Guard officer speak of the four men under his command who died in a helicopter crash. I watched young scouts lay yellow roses on the markers honoring the town’s men and women lost in combat. I thought that going to the ceremony would be a transcendent experience, one that would remind me that the world does not revolve around me, and that any problems I may think I have, in the immortal words of Rick Blaine,¹ “don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” I was not disappointed.

No words are sufficient to express my gratitude to our military veterans, especially to those who gave their lives in defense of our country. We are not a perfect union. We are only as good and enlightened as our laws, our people, our leaders, and the strength of our commitment to constitutional democracy. But the freedoms we enjoy and our collective capacity to accomplish the good that we do would not have survived this long without the extreme sacrifices made by countless men and women in uniform. It is important to pause on a day like today to remember those sacrifices, and to commit ourselves to ensuring that, despite the persistent onslaught of those who would divide us, we remain united. Only then will those we have lost in service to our country not have died in vain.

1. Humphrey Bogart’s character in “Casablanca.”