Memorial Day, 2010

Happy Memorial Day, we say to friends. Are you cooking out? Going to the beach? You’re driving to Great Aunt Elsie’s? Have a safe trip.

Maybe we fly a flag. We click on videos posted by our friends and share them with others, videos of funeral processions or Arlington National Cemetery, a country song of patriotism playing over it all. We plug in a DVD and watch an “old” movie: Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now.

Memorial Day is meant to be a memorial, a day to thank the soldiers, sailors, and marines who gave their lives for their country – for our country. We cannot thank those who have died to defend our freedoms. We can pray for them if that is a thing we do. Memorial Day seems to be a Veteran’s Day with flowers.

Did we go to a parade with marching bands and the local VFW post? Did we stay home because parking was too far from the parade route? Was the parade at an inconvenient time? Talk about inconvenient with a man on a stretcher bleeding from where his leg used to be. If he lived long enough to get a prosthetic leg, he would be happy to walk a mile or more to honor those with whom he served, no matter what war at what time in which country.

We may not pray for the dead or put flowers on their graves. We may not agree with the war in which they died. Remember, though, that they did not start the war. A government did, most likely our government, the same government that began returning the dead to their homeland only since Viet Nam.

Remember the poem “In Flanders Fields?” That wasn’t Flanders, New Jersey. It was in the Netherlands, written during World War I. That was before World Wars got numbers. It was called the Great War, the War to End All War. So far we’ve gotten to number two. I don’t want to see three. But we’ll see fighting throughout the world every day, probably until the end of time.

We bring them home now, the wounded, the dead, and the nearly dead. Medical advances have almost kept up with military advances. Some of the wounded are lucky enough to heal with only physical scars. Others carry emotional scars that will follow them for life. Some have engineered parts fitted to their bodies, mostly arms and legs. I shudder to think of others. It would be interesting to know the number of “survivors” there would be using WWII or Korean “War” medical knowledge.

There are 508,152 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans as patients in the VA system. Thousands more are waiting as much as a year for VA treatment for serious ailments including traumatic brain injury. Of those, 243,685 (48 percent) are mental health patients and 142,530 (28 percent) are being treated for PTSD. (It’s interesting that post-traumatic stress syndrome patients are separated from mental health patients.)

Perhaps instead of going to the beach or Aunt Elsie’s we should visit a VA hospital and thank a vet that would have died with medical knowledge from 50 or 60 years ago. Tell him (or her) how grateful you are for your freedoms he or she defended with such selflessness. Maybe you can make a new friend.

In 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.