Legacy MattersOn Veterans Day, we recognize in gratitude all those who served in the armed forces. On Memorial Day, we remember those who died in our wars, fighting for liberty.
Wikipedia lists the deaths in each of our wars. ( Click on the image for full size.)
Memorial Day used to be known as Decoration Day when graves of the fallen would be cleaned and decorated with flowers and flags, in small acts of respect and honor .
We remember to make their sacrifices real to us, to recall the losses so many families endured, to realize that the past is with us and their legacies live on in the freedom we enjoy today.
It's hard to imagine how great the sacrifices were but Tom Mountain looks at those died in Newton in the Second World War in We are their children.
Unfortunately, as Mac Owens writes
The sad reality is that Americans have forgotten how to honor their war heroes and to remember their war dead. ... stories of soldierly courage deserve “to be recorded and read by the next generation. Unsung, the noblest deed will die.”
The posture Americans took toward Memorial Day started to go awry with Vietnam. The press, if not the American people, began to treat soldiers as moral monsters, victims, or both. The “dysfunctional Vietnam vet” became a staple of popular culture. Despite the fact that atrocities were rare, My Lai came to symbolize the entire war. ...The honorable and heroic performance of the vast majority of those who served in Vietnam went largely unrecognized.
Abraham Lincoln knew how to honor war heroes in his Gettysburg Address
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth