Memorial Day 2012

Memorial Day. The day on which Americans honor their war dead. It is not, or should not be, a day of raucous celebration, but a day of solemn reflection on the sacrifices American soldiers have made to win independence and keep the United States free.
Soldiers are not very talkative generally, and they don’t really enjoy telling “war stories.” Rather, they are proud and stoic in the face of their mission and its ultimate demand.
I cannot think of a better place to remember America’s war dead than at Arlington National Cemetery, where my father is buried. He survived three wars and died in his 83rd year, but his memories of war never left him, nor did his belief that nothing on earth is as terrible as war.
So, let us today remember America’s fallen heroes and pray for them and their families.

Remember --

The Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery bears the following inscription:

Here rests in honored glory
an American soldier known but to God

There is also a Civil War Unknowns Monument at Arlington National Cemetery that marks mass graves of about 2,111 unknowns gathered from U.S. Civil War battlefields. The side of the memorial features this inscription:

Beneath this stone repose the bones of
Two thousand one hundred and eleven unknown
Soldiers gathered after the war. From the fields of Bull Run,
and the route to the Rappahanock, their remains could not be
identified. But their names and deaths are recorded in the archives of
their country, and its grateful citizens honor them as of their
nobel army of martyrs. May they rest in peace.
September. A. C. 1866.

There is also an area, called Jackson Circle, at Arlington National Cemetery where, after many years of bitter debate about allowing them to be buried at Arlington, the remains of Confederate soldiers repose. Reverend Randolph Harrison McKim, a Confederate chaplain who served as pastor of the Epiphany Church in Washington for 32 years, wrote the inscription on the monument to peace that overlooks the Circle. It is hard to find a more fitting description of America’s war dead. It reads:

Not for fame or reward
Not for place or for rank
Not lured by ambition
Or goaded by necessity
But in simple
Obedience to duty
As they understood it
These men suffered all
Sacrificed all
Dared all-and died

Memorial Day, 2012.