Someone wished me a “happy Memorial Day” in passing and I wondered if they understood what the holiday was really all about. What is it really all about? The above photo was taken the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial in France. According to Wikipedia, “the cemetery contains the largest number of American military dead in Europe (14,246), most of whom lost their lives during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive,” in World War I. Americans will gather there and at similar cemeteries all over the the world to commemorate this somber holiday meant to honor our war dead. So, as we observe (not celebrate) this Memorial Day, let me leave you with this poem sent to me by a veteran that sums up far better than I could what the holiday is all about:
Freedom isn’t free
I watched the flag pass by one day,
It fluttered in the breeze.
A young Marine saluted it,
And then he stood at ease..
I looked at him in uniform
So young, so tall, so proud,
With hair cut square and eyes alert
He’d stand out in any crowd.
I thought how many men like him
Had fallen through the years.
How many died on foreign soil
How many mothers’ tears?
How many pilots’ planes shot down?
How many died at sea
How many foxholes were soldiers’ graves?
No, freedom isn’t free.
I heard the sound of Taps one night,
When everything was still,
I listened to the bugler play
And felt a sudden chill.
I wondered just how many times
That Taps had meant “Amen,”
When a flag had draped a coffin.
Of a brother or a friend.
I thought of all the children,
Of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons and husbands
With interrupted lives.
I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea
Of unmarked tombs in Arlington.
No, freedom isn’t free.
– Author Unknown
Photo Credit: Jojoaektschn/Panoramio