“The soldier above all others prays for peace.” (Douglass MacCarthur)
Two days a year are set aside to honor our military – Veterans Day which we observe on November 11 and honors all of our veterans. The second, and to me the far more important one, is Memorial Day, observed on the last Monday of May. It is the one day a year set aside to honor the men and women who died while serving. So I ask of you that at 3pm local time on Monday, May 29 you turn off the music, put your drink down, and observe the ‘‘National Moment of Remembrance.” It’s only a minute, which isn’t to much to give to those who died while serving to protect us and our country.
I believe Oliver Wendell Holmes’ “The Soldier’s Faith” Speech of 1895 is the best summary of the importance of those who serve, what they sacrificed, and how little they ask in return. His conclusion stays with me the most, in which he tells those who never served what makes those who did content – honor and to rest in silence knowing the sacrifices we made ensured a free life to those who came after:
Three years ago died the old colonel of my regiment, the Twentieth Massachusetts. He gave the regiment its soul. No man could falter who heard his “Forward, Twentieth!”
I went to his funeral. From a side door of the church a body of little choir-boys came in alike a flight of careless doves. At the same time the doors opened at the front, and up the main aisle advanced his coffin, followed by the few gray heads who stood for the men of the Twentieth, the rank and file whom he had loved, and whom he led for the last time.
The church was empty. No one remembered the old man whom we were burying, no one save those next to him, and us. And I said to myself, The Twentieth has shrunk to a skeleton, a ghost, a memory, a forgotten name which we other old men alone keep in our hearts.
And then I thought: It is right. It is as the colonel would have it. This also is part of the soldier’s faith: Having known great things, to be content with silence. Just then there fell into my hands a little song sung by a warlike people on the Danube, which seemed to me fit for a soldier’s last word, another song of the sword, but a song of the sword in its scabbard, a song of oblivion and peace.
A soldier has been buried on the battlefield.
And when the wind in the tree-tops roared,
The soldier asked from the deep dark grave:
“Did the banner flutter then?”
“Not so, my hero,” the wind replied.
“The fight is done, but the banner won,
Thy comrades of old have borne it hence,
Have borne it in triumph hence.”
Then the soldier spake from the deep dark grave:
“I am content.”
Then he heareth the lovers laughing pass,
and the soldier asks once more:
“Are these not the voices of them that love,
That love–and remember me?”
“Not so, my hero,” the lovers say,
“We are those that remember not;
For the spring has come and the earth has smiled,
And the dead must be forgot.”
Then the soldier spake from the deep dark grave:
“I am content.”
I do not think a minute of silence is too much to give to those who gave so much…
Keep Calm And Jester On!