Memorial Day
For most of my life, I've had a hard time connecting to Memorial Day....When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God.
-Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
This is despite the fact that my father served in the navy, and his service very directly contributed to the type of household and lifestyle I grew up in. In fact, I probably wouldn't even be around if he hadn't impressed my mother with his globetrotting tales of the navy when they first met.
But Memorial Day has been easy to overlook. Easy to use as the official starter pistol of summer, another excuse to ditch work early on Friday, to lounge around in your shorts and barbeque. Not a day of memorial but three days of vacation.
This year is different for me. My friend Alan is stationed in Iraq. He left his wife Kristin behind to tend the household and take care of their kids. He didn't have to go: Alan re-upped, he volunteered, he's doing his job. And so is his wife.
And so to Alan, and to all our other members of the military, and to their loved ones, I say thank you for your sacrifice and for your service.
I may not believe in all the ways our military is used, but I believe in you.
-Tom
Did your friend Alan die? If he did, I'm sorry to hear.
Yet, you wrote this more like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_Day
It's the day for people that are serving or have served in the military (and are still alive.)
Memorial Day - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day is for honoring those who have died in the service of our country.
To me, the people who are serving now are making as much a sacrifice as those who have fallen. I don't see a point in making the distinction.
The honor is not in the loss, it is in the commitment.
Also, Memorial Day is not intended to honor people who merely joined the military, as you suggest. That is Veteran's Day.
Obviously your father was not killed in combat. I bet he didn't even get his leg blowed off by a mine.
What was your father's greatest sacrifice while in the military? Not having regular sex with your mother? Cross-country truck drivers experience the same hardship all the time.
Not everyone MAKES the sacrifice, but everyone is ASKED to. That's what we should remember. It's the spirit that's important, not the bones.
And for the record, you're not doing yourself or your argument any favors with your unnecessary and utterly offensive personal attacks on my father.
I'm doing my best not to respond in kind.
It is true that traditionally, Memorial Day is intended to mourn those who died in combat; it has evolved among many (unlike your attitude) to measure the importance of those who place themselves in the line of duty -- it seems fitting that we could acknowledge at least that much.
Back on track.
Making a commitment to do your duty is not the same as doing it. I made a commitment to kill any foreign soldiers who invaded the U.S.A., like in the movie "Red Dawn." Whether or not I will...who knows?
The same goes for all soldiers. Maybe they will charge the enemy, maybe they will hide or run away. Who knows? You, for example: If you were a soldier under enemy fire, you might use your acting skills to play dead. Or you might rush the machine gun nest and save the day, or have your head blowed off while trying. Who knows?
THAT is the crucial difference between Memorial Day and Veterans' Day.
I knew a marine who spent his tour of duty parking vehicles in tidy rows, jogging, cooking food in giant cauldrons and having sex with foreign girls. I don't think Memorial Day is meant for him. Memorial Day is meant for the Marines who died on Tarawa, for the soldiers who threw their bodies on grenades to save their buddies...and for all the soldiers who did not merely make a commitment, but actually DIED while doing their duty.
No, it hasn't. You just made me waste time by searching the internet, and I looked and looked. You are wrong. Memorial Day is entirely and completely about honoring dead soldiers, not live ones. If you and your friends are observing it incorrectly, then you are behaving in an ignorant manner.
However:
1) Veteran's Day is a NON holiday. Ask the average American on the street when Veteran's Day is I'd be surprised if you more than 10% could tell you. There is no national pause for our armed service members the way there is on Memorial Day. To continue the quote from Vonnegut: "Armistice Day was sacred. Veteran's Day is not." So I feel no qualms about re-appropriating Memorial Day.
2) Those acts of heroism you mentioned are all noble. That's why they have the Silver Star, and the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Medal of Honor.
3) Questioning the commitment is unnecessarily cynical. Yeah, your marine friend managed to slide through with an easy tour of duty. But how do you know that if he found a terrorist's bomb under one of his trucks he wouldn't have done the brave and noble thing? I PRAY TO GOD that my buddy Alan gets off with a easy, boring tour of duty. But the point is: THAT'S NOT WHAT HE SIGNED UP FOR.
4) I don't see how MY interpretation of Memorial Day diminishes YOUR interpretation of Memorial Day. Or why you care what I choose to celebrate.
Since you wondered why I care how you celebrate Memorial Day, I'll tell you. I care for two reasons ("care" is too strong a word, but whatever). One: because you wrote: "For most of my life, I've had a hard time connecting to Memorial Day." So I was trying to educate you about what Memorial Day is really all about.
I now feel like Charlie Brown screaming on stage, "Doesn't anyone KNOW what Memorial Day is ALL ABOUT?" Sigh. Where's Linus when you need him?
And two: Because when I bookmarked your blog, it didn't record in my browser as "Tom Lommel blog" or "The Musings of Lommel," or whatever. It, by your own design, recorded in my bookmark folder as "Thinking Allowed." So...I assumed thinking was allowed here.
But I'm now thinking you were just being a smartass by naming your blog "thinking allowed," and you actually think your fans are stupid, so you have to give them permission to think, because they're stupid.
I don't by any means intend to diminish the courage and sacrifice of those who have fallen in war.
It just so happens that, for particularly personal reasons, this year I also wanted to celebrate the courage and sacrifice (whether it be in blood, toil, or time away from their home) that our current service members and their families put forth.
They've made a bigger commitment than I have.
Put another way: I choose to celebrate the heroes while they're still among us.
The small conservative Minnesota town I grew up in regularly held a Memorial Day parade up to the cemetery, where a 21-gun salute was made. So--pride of place for the war dead. However, the parade also included veterans and National Guardsmen and was thus also an occasion to honor their living service. Many families visited the cemetery to place flowers on graves whether the deceased was a veteran who died in action or not, or simply a deceased family member. In lieu of a "Day of the Dead" like Mexico has, this expansion of Memorial Day seemed entirely appropriate and not some sort of sinister repurposing/dilution by stupid L.A. liberals.
The small Wisconsin town I live in now does things much the same.
Finally, Memorial Day has traditionally been an occasion for family gatherings due to the time of year/the weather (spring!) and the fact that many people are off that day. Our family doesn't have any war dead that I know of, but honoring the many deceased veterans, living vets, and active service members in our family has been a component of these family reunions. Frankly not too many of us have November 11 off anymore, and even if we did it's too cold for a picnic. I guess I can't see this as a cheapening of Memorial Day. We still know the difference between the two day; I don't think any of us would equate peacetime service with the ultimate sacrifice--it's just that since we don't really have a separate communal opportunity readily available to us, we choose to thank the living on this day also.
Lommel, however, has a different stance. He wants Memorial Day to be the new Valentine's Day for "living" soldiers.
Lommel: "I wuv you, soldiers! XOX!"
His POV is misguided and lame, in my snide but humble opinion.
I've been on the internet far too long to care or get worked up about it.
They aren't paying the same price that Major Steven Hutchison, the 60 year old Arizona native who was recently killed here did. They aren't paying the price that any of the families of the men and women who are killed or maimed over here are. Hopefully they won't have to. But they know its a possibility. I work at a major headquarters, in the middle of a well protected FOB, but even I had a Chineese 107mm rocket land a quarter mile from my tent last week. The point is, and I speak for the cook, the car parker, the recon Marine, the Quick Response Force 11B (Infantry soldier) that goes outside the wire EVERY NIGHT to show EOD where they "think" the IED is, the Headquarters Fobbit (look it up), the Generals, the Privates, the Coast Gaurd Captian I saw the other day, and the rest of the thousands of military people deployed around the world when I say "Patton's Ghost, shut the hell up. Anyone who wants to can be thankful and appreciative of the FREEDOM they enjoy, thanks to the SACRAFICES of others on any damn day they want to." That's what its all about. Not some psuedo-intellectual, made up argument about when the "appropriate" time to honor living veterans versus those who have died.
When people I don't even know say thank you, it means a lot. When someone I know, respect, and care about says thanks, it means the world, and even someone's "Holier than thou" educational stance against it can't change that.
Thanks for your words Tom. See you in 2010 - we SO need to have a beer. Or eleven.