The following is an excerpt of my Memorial Day keynote speech at the Heritage Community Memorial Day remembrance.
The first Memorial Day ceremony took place following the Civil War, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. at the home of Gen. Robert E. Lee three years after the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868. Originally it was called Decoration Day.
In the past 3,400 years, only 268 have been without war. As for American wars, since that first Decoration Day over a million American soldiers lost their lives in wars. Winston Churchill said it best, “never was so much owed by so many to so few”
I also have a special fondness for members of the Greatest Generation who made the ultimate sacrifice in WWII. As of 2023, the US Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that 119,550 of the 16.1 million Americans who served in World War II are still alive, which is less than 1%.
My first novel, Aaron’s War, is a story about a reluctant patriotic boy who enlists in the Army after Pearl Harbor. As his Army unit is passing through Belgium on their way to the front, their truck breaks outside the Flanders Field American Cemetery and Memorial, he sees headstones aligned in four symmetrical areas around the white stone chapel in the center of the cemetery and the memorial that reads:
In Memory of those American Soldiers who fought
in this region and who sleep in unknown graves.
It wasn’t lost on the young boy soldier, Aaron, that 26 years earlier in WWI over 1 million soldiers died, were injured, or were missing in action fighting for this same piece of land.
Were they men finding peace here after being pushed to their limit, when dying was the only remedy to their madness, to the fear of dying? All around the cemetery, as far as he could see were wilted and forlorn wildflowers—dead or dying.
Canadian war poet Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae wrote the following poem after witnessing the death of his friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, the day before.
In Flanders Fields
By John McCrae
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
