By Charlton Stanley, Weekend Contributor
As I wrote on this blog a year ago, Memorial Day is the misunderstood “holiday.” Many people confuse Memorial Day with Veteran’s Day. Veteran’s Day began as Armistice Day, commemorating the Armistice signed at the eleventh hour, eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918. In our political and military naivete, the Armistice was meant to be the end of the, “War To End All Wars.” Two decades later it started all over again. Veteran’s Day is on November 11 in the US. Veteran’s Day is meant to honor those who served in the military in both peacetime and war, both living and dead.
Memorial Day has a history predating Armistice Day by a half century. On May May 5, 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War, Decoration Day was established. It was named Decoration Day because the day was set aside for the living to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. May 30 was chosen as Decoration Day because flowers would be in bloom all over the country. The tradition somehow spread to honor non-veterans as well. As a youngster, I remember churches and communities where we lived celebrating Decoration Day by placing flowers on graves in all the local cemeteries. I remember attending some of these solemn rituals as a child,. I helped out the adults by placing at least one flower on each grave. Every grave needed at least one flower. It was important to decorate the graves of those who had no relatives left, otherwise, there would be no remembrance of them. The flower was a token of remembrance, even if we didn’t know who they were. Why? Because every life needs to be remembered and honored. In 1971, Memorial Day was established by an Act of Congress. Officially, Memorial Day differs somewhat from Decoration Day as I knew it as a youngster, because it was meant by Congress to remember those who served the country in uniform and have now passed through that mysterious veil.
Now? Nothing says “honor the dead” quite like a mattress sale.
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.
In 2002, the Veterans of Foreign Wars issued an official proclamation, which 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.”
Beginning 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 Jim Gibbons introduced a bill in the house saying the same thing. Both bills were referred to Committee where they died. Every year until his death Senator Inouye re-introduced the bill. The mattress sale lobby is too powerful for something so trivial as grieving for our dead.
The current practice in military cemeteries is to place a flag next to each stone. Families and loved ones still place flowers on graves, but those numbers dwindle as survivors age and pass away themselves.
Out of war, grief and misery, there has come great poetry. Some sad, some funny, some reflective. No poem has captured the spirit and meaning of remembering the dead as one that flowed from the pen of Lt. Col. John McRae, MD. A physician from Ontario, Canada, Dr. John McRae was caught in the 1915 attacks when the Germans began using shells with chlorine gas. McRae somehow survived. He helped treat the wounded. He helped bury the dead, including his close friend, Lieutenant Alex Helmer . Some time after that, McRae noticed poppies growing among the graves. Due in part to the poem Dr. McRae wrote, the poppy has come to symbolize the dead from the battlefield. And thanks to John McRae, almost everyone knows of Flanders Fields. However, all too many of those born in the last fifty or sixty years don’t really understand what or where Flanders Fields are.
We have all seen the old veterans, standing outside stores and on street corners, selling little red paper flowers. The petals of a real poppy look like tissue paper. A charitable organization in Belgium began selling little paper poppies to support war orphans after the “War To End All Wars.” It wasn’t long before American service organizations picked up the tradition. These little red paper poppies offered by old soldiers became a way of helping their brother veterans, many of whom were disabled or dying. One veteran told a reporter, “We used to hand out little cards with each poppy, telling about Colonel McRae and why we had the little flowers, but they’d take the poppies and toss the paper. So we stopped giving them out. Most don’t know.”
Lt. Col. John McRae, MD wrote this poem on 3 May 1915 while sitting on the back of a field ambulance at Ypres, France. It was the day after he had just buried his good friend, Lt. Helmer. John McRae himself died in January 1918 of pneumonia. He had been working non-stop, and his command was the No. 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill) at Boulogne. Although the history books articles are vague, one has to wonder if his premature death at the age of 45 was due at least in part to the gas and fatigue. His immune system must have been terribly weakened. He is buried in Wimereux Cemetery near Boulogne. He did not live long enough to see Armistice Day and the end of the war.
IN FLANDERS FIELDS
by John McRaeIn Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
The video below is Steve McDonald singing a parent’s lament, “Live On My Warrior Son.” The images are from the cemeteries in Flanders, Belgium.
This weekend blog post is dedicated to my youngest son.
United States Coast Guard
Photo by Charlton Stanley (his father)
—ooOoo—
Thanks Darrel.
May Sergeants Carl Carlson and Kirby Cowan have Godspeed on their journeys to forever…
Blue skies, tailwinds, no turbulence and the ball stay centered as they and their buddies who gave all on that fateful day over Paris on 22 June 1944 fly west.
To all the living servicemen and women, must respect and honor is owed to you by this country. To all those that gave their lives in the protection of our county, thank you for your service and sacrifice.
ALL GAVE SOME, SOME GAVE ALL.
A VERY POIGNANT MASTERPIECE…..Thank you Charlton for the way you have moved us all.
I will as usual for myself, spend the real Memorial Day in admiration, homage and remembrance of all the World Class Patriots who have personally come to be “mine”.
Thank you for bringing Timothy to us. I realize that no one but yourself, can know the depth of your feelings that encapsulate him within you forever…..
Lest we forget:
Dulce Et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen: Read by Christopher Eccleston
Americans who have never received or given a well-folded flag in exchange for a loved one cannot and will not ever understand. Nor would I wish them to do so ever.
So, while I mourn that Memorial day seems to have little memorial left to it, I’m not embittered our angry about it. I can’t believe my dead or any of the other of our dead warriors would be displeased over Americans celebrating the lives, lifestyles, and liberties these warriors’ sacrifices helped ensure. I like to believe that it helps remind them that they were victorious.
The atheist / religionist divide creates an ubi sunt day.
Some think only the grave with bones remains, others think nothing but memory of them remains.
Never-the-less, all seem to have ubi sunt sentiments.
A Memorial Day salute…….B-1B Lancer roll
Elaine. It’s one of mine also. The movie conveys many issues, not just in the military and in the past but today also. The song at the end of the movie would play in my head for a while after I would watch the movie. I understand the actor who played Morant sang it.
In my view this movie does a good job of capturing the zeitgeist of the late Victorian empire.
Admittedly in recent years the movie has become a bit difficult at times to watch for me. I certainly didn’t suffer the same fate as the three accused, I had a five year ordeal in fighting an injustice brought on me by members of a department and city administrators I formerly worked for. (not the sheriff’s office I retired from) Having the case going through the federal and state courts while the department tried to destroy my career and even went as far to sue me in a completely baseless claim. I was publicly humiliated in the news by statements provided by the department and they forbad my friends who were officers with that department from associating with me and the stress this caused nearly unraveled me. And why was this done? Because I turned in some safety notices relating to some hazardous conditions. The chief of police and the administrators went all out to run me out of the departmnet and retaliated at every opportunity they could. I couldn’t take it any more and transferred to the Sheriff’s Office. And then I made my second mistake, I made a public records request for some documents I knew would reveal the Chief’s malfeasances and coverup of an incident where an administrator committed a felony assault against his son. I worked to bring out this corruption into the public and the police chief even tried to get the sheriff to fire me on some trumped up BS. Two of my friends who were still with that department and they received the brunt of the administrations wrath when the admin discovered they were aiding me and after they testified in a deposition I called during my lawsuit.
Now the administration began displacing their anger at me on my friends and harassed them for months, threatening to fire them and bringing up trumped charges on them at every opportunity. The stress my good friend and I shared was so intese at times I think if we didn’t have each others support we might have had a breakdown. I was greatly worried I would go to his house and find him no longer with us.
I finally got the state Attorney General’s Office involved and eventually the Chief was fired and the officer who assaulted his son was criminally charged. I thought that would be the end of it, but the new adminstration did everything it could to seek revenge against my friends and over several more months ended up firing both of them, thus ensuing another long civil action that the city lost. But, it was too much for them both so they moved out of state because they couldn’t bear to live there anymore.
After all of this we went through, no settlement could have made things right for us. It all started out as a whistleblower issue and as a result a five year nightmare rained down by petty tyrant administrators and those in power who could be as unjust and unresrained as they wanted and cause an upheaval in someone’s life without a care in the world. And, stack everything against you with little recourse, using other peoples money and resources to do so whenever it suited them.
This is why Breaker Morant resonates with me. Mine was certainly not combat, or facing capital punishment, but I can in large measure understand and identify with them and the injustice they faced against a leadership that viewed the three as expendable and to be unjustly punished by rules they make up themselves. So, it’s a little uneasy to watch, but a worthwhile reminder of such things nonetheless.
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Chuck,
Here’s the final scene from one of my favorite movies–Breaker Morant:
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Chuck,
A great tribute. When I see the pictures of the Old Guard placing flags at all of the gravestones at Arlington, it brings tears to my eyes. I will have to make it out there on Memorial Day to see the flag at my Father’s headstone. May they all rest in peace and may they all be remembered.
I would like to honor and remember two men, both aviators. They both left us in 2008.
Colonel Charlie Brown, USAF
Oberleutnant Franz Stigler, Luftwaffe
Their story is at this link: 70 years ago today, two honorable men met….
Chuck, I’m so sorry to hear you lost your youngest son. My deepest condolences, I can only imagine how difficult it must be to lose a child.
I will not give out the names. But I honor two men who died ten years ago on May 25th. They each knew each other in grade school. They both were of Sicilian families. They graduated from high school on the same day. In 1942 they both enlisted in the Army under the Buddy System. They went to the Pacific. Each received numerous decorations and each came back in 1945 alive. Thereafter they lived not far from each other and got together at least once a year. When my pal died, I was reading the obits and there, in alphabetical order was his pal. They both died on Memorial Day, and within an hour of each other.
My mother’s first cousin and best friend died on the Bataan Death March. I honor him.
Thank you for the tribute Chuck. And, to your son for his service to our country.
I do know that people get this holiday mixed with Veterans’ Day. Wasn’t it President Obama that dedicated the day to the survivors there with them at the service.
Thank you for this beautiful reminder and remembrance. And thank you, your son and your entire family, for your service. May Timothy’s memory always be a blessing.
Reblogged this on U.S. Constitutional Free Press.