Submitted by Charlton Stanley (Otteray Scribe), Guest Blogger
Photo by Charlton Stanley (his father)
Friday I was reading another blog, and was stunned and appalled to read this opening line in a post (emphasis mine):
“For most of us, Memorial Day is a joyous occasion. We may think of idyllic, lazy summer days of childhood, whole months away from school. Our greatest concern might well be the inevitable traffic jams created when large groups of people head for the same destination at the same time.”
Many, including the person who wrote the statement above, mistake Veteran’s Day for Memorial Day. The day does not celebrate the veteran. It is a day of remembrance for those who never had a chance to become a veteran. Veteran’s Day is November 11, formerly called Armistice Day.
Memorial Day was originally known as Decoration Day. The exact origin of the custom of decorating the graves of those who gave all in service to the country is shrouded by the mists of time and folklore. Memorial Day became official when General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, issued his General Order No. 11 on 5 May 1868. The first official Memorial Day observance was 30 May 1868. On that day, flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. Every year until 1971, Memorial Day was observed on May 30. In 1971, the National Holiday Act of 1971 was passed, making Memorial Day part of a three-day weekend. When Memorial Day became just another long weekend with a day off from work, it began to lose its meaning as a day of remembrance and reflection. The VFW’s official proclamation in 2002 stated in part,
“Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general public’s nonchalant observance of Memorial Day.”
In 1999, Senator Dan Inouye introduced a bill to restore the traditional day of observance of Memorial Day back to May 30 instead of “the last Monday in May”. The same year, Representative Gibbons introduced a bill in the house saying the same thing. Both bills were referred to Committee. Every year until his death, Senator Inouye re-introduced the bill. If anyone had the credentials to speak for veterans everywhere, it was Senator Inouye; one of the few members of Congress awarded the Medal of Honor. I hope that one day, Memorial Day will return to the original May 30. Every year that passes, a bit more of the real meaning of the day is lost.
We owe it to the dead to honor their memory. It does not matter the war, the cause, or the politics. For every one of those marble slabs in the Gardens of Stone, some parent or loved one got that terrible, awful knock on the door. When I was young, it seemed as if every other house had a gold star in the front window. Those memories are still fresh, even after all those decades. A series has been running on the Daily Kos blog called IGTNT (I Got The News Today). The series honors and remembers those Americans who lost their lives in combat or military operations in the war zone. Their names and pictures are there. Read them and weep for the loved ones left only with memories.
From the Skene Manuscripts
Shortly after the bloody battle at Flodden Field in 1513, one of the members of Clan Skene composed Flowers of the Forest as a lament for the Scots who perished in that terrible battle. It was probably composed originally for the harp, however; it was quickly adapted for the bagpipes. It was lost for about a century, until it was found in the Skene Manuscripts as “Flowres of the Forrest.” The original pipe tune did not have lyrics. In 1756, Jean Elliot wrote lyrics for the tune. Piping Flowers of the Forest has become traditional in the UK for military memorial services. The custom has spread to the US, and is often requested. Flowers of the Forest was piped for my son at his service in the National Cemetery. Because of the somber meaning of the lyrics and tune, pipers will not play or practice Flowers of the Forest in public. Public airing of the ancient tune is reserved for remembrance of the dead.
Flowers of the Forest refers to the soldiers. “The flowers of the forest are all wede away,” means they are all withered away, dead. Centuries later, the flowers theme would be reprised when Roy Williamson composed Flower of Scotland, which has become the National Anthem. This is Ronnie Browne singing Jean Elliot’s lyrics on the actual battlefield at Flodden, now peaceful meadowland.
Flowers of the Forest
By Jean Elliot, (1727 – 1805)
I’ve heard them liltin’, at the ewe milkin,’
Lasses a-liltin’ before dawn of day.
Now there’s a moanin’, on ilka green loanin’.
The flowers of the forest are a’ wede away.
As boughts in the mornin’, nae blithe lads are scornin’,
Lasses are lonely and dowie and wae.
Nae daffin’, nae gabbin’, but sighin’ and sobbin’,
Ilk ane lifts her leglin, and hies her away.
At e’en in the gloamin’, nae swankies are roamin’,
‘Mang stacks wi’ the lasses at bogle to play.
But ilk maid sits drearie, lamentin’ her dearie,
The flowers of the forest are a’ wede away.
In har’st at the shearin’ nae youths now are jeerin’
Bandsters are runkled, and lyart, or grey.
At fair or at preachin’, nae wooin’, nae fleecin’,
The flowers of the forest are a’ wede away.
Dool for the order sent our lads to the Border,
the English for ance by guile wan the day.
The flowers of the forest, that fought aye the foremost,
The prime of our land lie cauld in the clay.
We’ll hae nae mair liltin’, at the ewe milkin’,
Women and bairns are dowie and wae.
Sighin’ and moanin’ on ilka green loanin’,
The flowers of the forest are all wede away.
Vietnam had its iconic poems, tunes and laments as well. One of the more famous poems was by a helicopter pilot; Major Michael Davis O’Donnell. This was written on New Year’s Day, 1970 at Dak To. Major O’Donnell was killed three months later when his helicopter was shot down with twelve souls aboard. His helicopter was hit by ground fire while rescuing troops who had come under heavy fire.
By Major Michael Davis O’Donnell
If you are able, save them a place inside you,
And save one backward glance when you are leaving,
for the places they can no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say you loved them,
though you may, or may not have always.
Take what they have left, and what they have
taught you with their dying, and keep it as your own.
And in that time that when men decide, and feel safe,
to call the war insane, take one moment,
to embrace these gentle heroes you left behind.
There are many poems, essays and songs appropriate for Memorial Day, and for Memorial Day weekend. Some have special meaning for me. Joe Kilna MacKenzie wrote Sgt. MacKenzie in memory of his grandfather, Sgt. Charles Stuart MacKenzie of the Seaforth Highlanders. Joe lost his own battle with cancer in 2009.
About his grandfather, Joe wrote:
“To the best of my knowledge, and taken from reports of the returning soldiers, one of his close friends fell, badly wounded. Charles stood his ground and fought until he was overcome and died from bayonet wounds. On that day, my great grandmother and my grandmother were sitting at the fire when the picture fell from the wall. My great grandmother looked, and said to my grandmother “Oh, my bonnie Charlie’s dead”. Sure enough, a few days passed, and the local policeman brought the news – that Sgt. Charles Stuart MacKenzie had been killed in action. This same picture now hangs above my fireplace. A few years back my wife Christine died of cancer, and in my grief, I looked at his picture to ask what gave him the strength to go on. It was then, in my mind, that I saw him lying on the field and wondered what his final thoughts were. The words and music just appeared into my head. I believe the men and woman like yourself who are prepared to stand their ground for their family – for their friends – and for their country; deserve to be remembered, respected and honoured. “Sgt. MacKenzie”, is my very small tribute to them.”
Sgt. MacKenzie was featured in the soundtrack of the movie, We Were Soldiers. The cover photo in the video is Sergeant MacKenzie.
Eric Bogle wrote several songs about the futility and waste of war, two of the most famous being Green Fields of France, and The Band Played Waltzing Matilda. Lesser known is My Youngest Son Came Home Today. Eric says Mary Black, as a woman and mother, sings it far better than he ever could. Here is Mary Black with My Youngest Son Came Home Today.
Memorial Day is for remembering and honoring those who died in the service of their country. Please share your own special remembrances, poems or songs.
Otteray Scribe</b? 1, May 26, 2013 at 2:25 pm
Dredd,
How many of your kids have you buried?
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More threats?
If you (all humans) don't want to bury your kids stop glorifying war and start glorifying peace.
It is a hell of a lot better.
Happy World Peace Day!!!!!
In honor of Costa Rica, a free and democratic nation that banned any military in 1949.
They are doing quite well with their freedoms without any military thank you very much.
rafflaw 1, May 26, 2013 at 2:20 pm
Dredd,
The right that you have to express your views is just as strong as the right for OS to express his dislike for your views. That is not censorship, but free speech.
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BS. I am not threatening him, he is threatening me.
Like the post he dropped a nuke on a while back.
He could not handle the fact that his military hero was a freak.
Who do you think you are kidding with that twisted “logic”?
Dredd, Grief and raw emotions are what make us human. People can see and understand that in others, because it is what binds us as emotional beings. And w/ that common bond, we offer respect to others griefing. Have you been tested for Aspergers?
raff,
At our house, and I am sure at yours as well as countless others, Memorial Day is every day you walk past that folded flag in its triangular cherrywood case. In our home we have two of them. One on the mantel over the fireplace and one on a bookcase. I will be taking flowers out to the cemetery either this afternoon or first thing in the morning.
One of my rituals is to walk through the stones reading the names aloud. It is important to remember their names.
“When Memorial Day became just another long weekend with a day off from work, it began to lose its meaning as a day of remembrance and reflection. The VFW’s official proclamation in 2002 stated in part,”
“Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general public’s nonchalant observance of Memorial Day.”
Chuck,
Great article and quite appropriate for this weekend. A few thoughts occurred to me as I was reading and listening to it. Let’s face it the legislation making for three day weekends had commercial interests behind it. Three day weekends are good for business. Unfortunately they also turn the holiday’s meaning into an orgy of car and furniture sales, that further destroy the holiday’s meaning. This was done too when Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays became President’s Day and both Presidents had their avatars dressed up to sell product. MLK’s holiday is used for the same commercial purpose.
And don’t get me started about Thanksgiving or Christmas. Yes I’m sad for Christmas and yet I a Jew have never celebrated it. Christmas should be the most joyous of Christian holidays, yet it has become a time of terrible stress in the buying of little remembered presents and watching all day football.
Thanksgiving, has been almost destroyed by Black Friday and more football. Growing up Thanksgiving was always a special day in my family as we would gather together at my Grandmothers for dinner. It was a day of talk and play and catching up with the latest family news. It was also a day where we as children of immigrants could celebrate our escape from European Ghettoes and from the Shoah. When my girls were growing up we had the ritual on Thanksgiving mornings in bed together watching the Macy’s Parade and in the afternoon with the rest of my wife’s family together. While I’m a big football fan incidentally, I never let it come before my wife and children and missed many a game to be with them. Ritual is an important part of our lives, no matter how hiply intellectual we pretend to be.
The reason all of this bothers me so much is that part of the glue that bonds societies together are their public rituals. Those rituals in America that should bring us together in a common feeling of oneness have been replaced by opportunities to merchandise. That is why I quote the VFW, which as an organization is not my cup of tea, but in this they are correct. Our society has lost its sense of common ritual and much of that comes from the slick propaganda of Ad men, turning those rituals into merchandising opportunities.
I think some miss the point that to honor those who died in war, really doesn’t contradict the fact that war is predominantly a racket. The young men and women who have lost their lives in what they thought was protecting their country are gone too early and for most of them they believe their cause was noble, so their own acts were noble, even if the war wasn’t. As we know in Larry Rafferty’s case his father’s loss weighed heavily on his childhood and his life. My wife’s youngest Uncle, who she is named after, was a tail-gunner who got shot down in WWII. Even though she never knew him she is still moved by the effect his loss had on her grandparents and her mother. You too have suffered your losses. I protested a lot against Viet Nam, but never against those who fought there. They were the pawns of a misguided policy and had their lived marred by the experience even if they lived through it. Contrary to popularly spread mythology most of us who protested did so because we wanted to bring the guys home, out of harm’s way.
I have written about my anti-war position here often and in truth I think that the wars of my lifetime have been farces, save for WWII. Yet my disdain for war cannot be extended towards those who have sacrificed in the process. Perhaps if rather than an orgy of commercial exploitation, we actually had cause to think about the waste of young people war brings, we might not be so anxious to go to war. I guess though the genie is out of the bottle and the concept of shared national rituals is a thing of the past.
Dredd,
How many of your kids have you buried? If you haven’t had to listen to Taps being played for one of your children, I suggest you don’t blow me off in such a cavalier fashion. I had requested folks post poems, music or memories of loved ones here. This is Memorial Day.
You are forgetting why we commemorate this day. Listen to what Abraham Lincoln had to say at the dedication of the first National Cemetery at Gettysburg:
Dredd,
you did not answer my question. Did our service men and women fight for our freedoms in the world wars? I was specific. There is no quote needed to ask the question. Yes Memorial Day is tomorrow. At least for some of us.
Dredd,
The right that you have to express your views is just as strong as the right for OS to express his dislike for your views. That is not censorship, but free speech.
rafflaw 1, May 26, 2013 at 2:13 pm
Dredd,
Are you suggesting that our veterans of the World wars did not fight for our freedoms? These men and women gave our lives for our country, whether you or I agreed with the political reasons their superiors ordered them into battle. Happy Memorial Day.
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Give me a quote so I have a point of reference.
I quoted the one who wrote the Constitution in sufficient part to be called “The Father of the Constitution”.
Are you suggesting he did not write it or say what I said he said?
Or General Smedley.
Or General Geobbels?
Please be specific when you ask a question about 300 years of history.
Happy Memorial Day is tomorrow isn’t it?
Otteray Scribe 1, May 26, 2013 at 1:58 pm
OK, Dredd, your disrespect for the dead and their loved ones is noted. There are lots of other threads you can disrupt besides this one. Suggest you leave it alone.
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You need some counseling about this stuff that is “still raw” with you.
Seriously, there is nothing wrong with getting counseling if something sends you over the moon.
Your fight for the freedom to censor and suppress free speech and claim I am doing blasphemy here on Turley Blog is quite strange and out of place.
You have no right to impose “your raw” here on Professor Turley’s Blog, because it shames the nature of this free and open forum blog.
Please stop doing that OS.
Dredd,
Are you suggesting that our veterans of the World wars did not fight for our freedoms? These men and women gave our lives for our country, whether you or I agreed with the political reasons their superiors ordered them into battle. Happy Memorial Day.
OS, Great picture of your daughter. I’m sure she still misses her brother.
I often visit the graves of various family members who have passed and put flowers there every year at the end of May. None of them died in combat. My father served in the Marines briefly in WW2. He was lucky enough to be an excellent clarinetist and played in a Marine band. He was honorably discharged almost immediately at the end of the war, I guess b/c he had young children.
My attempt at tribute the those from NYS killed in Afghanistan and Iraq were panels with their pictures and identification, a picture of a flag draped coffin (Bush had made such pictures off limits), and each picture surrounded by about 50 flags of the country in which they fought. At one anti-war rally, many people stopped by to find a picture of those from their town or county. I met the family of one of those depicted. Their emotions were so raw. They all appreciated the panels. After that I had to stop. I could no longer deal with reading the stories of these young people when doing the research.
I don’t do anything to dishonor those who died in military service. I just think there is a better way to honor them and that is by refusing to serve in illegal wars or wars started on the basis of lies or hegemony. Defense is something else, but we’ve had so few conflicts that qualify.
OK, Dredd, your disrespect for the dead and their loved ones is noted. There are lots of other threads you can disrupt besides this one. Suggest you leave it alone.
Nameless Vet 1, May 26, 2013 at 1:34 pm
… I want you to know that I and tens of thousands of others like me, served so you have the freedom to express those feelings, and I do not begrudge you the right to express them.
…
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I grant you your right to believe in your own mythology.
You did not give me squat by killing millions of people around the globe.
You took an oath to uphold the Constitution, like every other person does that takes the oath of federal office.
That Constitution you swore to uphold gave us our freedoms.
You usurp it by saying you gave us our freedoms.
Otteray Scribe 1, May 26, 2013 at 1:27 pm
Dredd,
This is still raw for me. It is not an abstraction. It is real.
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Ok fine, I have no problem with that.
I grant you all past, present, and future anecdotal realities.
But we are taling about the public here, not the private.
Public history is what this is about.
This short video shows what anecdotal material can do to ideology that is owned by the public.
Great picture OS of your daughter at the cemetery. That is the impact those sacred sites have for those that are left behind. I hope that she will get the music back into her heart sometime soon.
Great post.
Thank you for this, Otteray Scribe.
For those of you who are anti-war, I understand your feelings, and I want you to know that I and tens of thousands of others like me, served so you have the freedom to express those feelings, and I do not begrudge you the right to express them.
That is what America is about, at it’s core. Freedom.
But this day is NOT about how YOU feel about war, war profiteers, patriotism, the military, or any of that.
This day is about my brothers and sisters who gave their lives defending an ideal.
Many of us were young and naive, and yes, idealistic when we served.
We went to France, Germany and the south Pacific.
We went to the Korean Peninsula and Southeast Asia.
We went to Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan.
We died on the beaches of Normandy, Anzio and Pelelau.
We died in the deserts of north Africa and the middle East.
We died in the jungles of Vietnam, Africa and Grenada.
We died in the snows of Inchon, and the Ruhr, and Helmand province.
We died in training accidents.
We died of enemy fire…and friendly fire.
We died on, above and beneath oceans all over the globe.
We were marines, and airmen, and soldiers, and sailors, and coast guardsmen.
We were someone’s brothers, sisters, fathers, sons, daughters, and lately, perhaps someone’s mother.
Someone missed us, someone died a little when we died, someone cried, and someone held a flag and watched a coffin being lowered into a grave.
Sometimes, the coffin was empty.
So regardless of how you feel about war, or the military, take a moment, and remember the ones who will never come home, or who came home silent forever.
We believed, most of us, in what we were doing.
Even if we didn’t, we still did it to the best of our abilities, and tried not to let our fellow squadmates/crewmates/aircrewmen down.
Please do not denigrate that sacrifice.
Peace, out.
Dredd,
This is still raw for me. It is not an abstraction. It is real. The story behind that picture link is this. Early one morning my daughter wanted to go to the cemetery. I took my camera so I could catch the early morning sunlight when the cemetery is at its most beautiful. I accidentally caught that shot, which I have titled simply, “My Brother.”
I asked her if she would play her pipes at his memorial service. She said, “Daddy, I can’t.” She has not picked up her bagpipes since. They are laying on the piano, which has not been played either. She says, “The music has gone out of my heart.”
Thank you, OS.
Otteray Scribe 1, May 26, 2013 at 12:55 pm
Dredd and BK,
What has that got to do with remembering the dead.
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Please explain what you mean by “that” … I for one do not want to get caught up in a blasphemy charge.
My points are well documented in history, and your post is about history.
Good history is a worthy goal for all of us, as you have shown in your history of Decoration Day becoming Memorial Day.
Also the mention of “When Memorial Day became just another long weekend with a day off from work, it began to lose its meaning …”
That does not explain why it began to lose “meaning” it only explains when it began to lose meaning.
It is ok to contemplate why it lost its meaning.
That is history too.