To What End, These Memorials Be?

I read with interest the history of Memorial Day this morning.[i] While it was a practice from state to state, it was recognized officially first in 1873 as a state holiday of New York. Its purpose needs no introduction: Americans are well acquainted with the tradition of remembering her fallen heroes of wars past and wars present.

Hardly a living American soul is untouched by those who have served unhesitatingly (or even hesitatingly) in the most horrific of circumstances on her behalf. War is ugly and a travesty upon Humanity. But Humanity would be less of one without an acquiescent bow to her guardians of defense. I am left wondering, is there something lacking in the memory?

Is the point of a Memorial to preserve the memory? To what end are our memories preserved? A memory nestled solitaire serves no purpose. A memory with any sort of value embeds a conviction of emotion, which in turn compels action. If a memory produces enamoration, we’ll preserve the thing that caused the memory. If a memory carries with it anger, or hurt, we will seek to prevent the memory from ever again being replicated. Wisdom would foster doing whatever is necessary to prevent the same situation from arising. Arguably the most powerful memories cause an indelible change to our character—one that is eternally lasting.

Such are the memories of Memorial Day. Whether their donation of the ultimate sacrifice for American’s sakes is accepted or rejected by destiny, our feelings for those who have offered it should produce more in us than flowers by the granite marker's side; and another reason to create memories of the best neighborhood barbecue. They should instill, and then preserve, the thing that was worth preserving—that which gave worth to the memory in the first place. Otherwise, the memory is vain; and nothing more than a fictitious hypocrisy, a blatant sanctimony. Real memories compel production.

Let us go to the beginning—where early settlers became the first to sacrifice to the future development of this nation. Surely, that history is flawed, filled with humans doing the best with unexpected realizations far from their romantic notions of fleeing their Motherland for a better, more promising life. They faced battles with native residents, famine, disease, the worst of elements, forsaken refineries and gentlemanly courts, ethnocentrism and prejudice, and stability to bring a future of idealism to their descendants. They set the stage for social paradigm shifts.

The rebels of the Revolutionary war, having little more than faith in God, George Washington, and an ideal passed along to them by nearly a century of evolving paradigms about freedom, suffered the same contradictions of the early Colonists. This time, the circumstance was war. The Revolution teetered between creating the most prolific real estate for liberty and killing an ideal stone dead. Its memory should produce in every American since its time a fire to protect what was devotedly produced for our sakes, and at great personal and accumulated peril--a legacy of inalienable rights that before that time, no government either unquestionably acknowledged or protected.

Nearly a century later, the Civil War became the bloodiest battlein United States history.[ii]When the dust settled, there were more than one million casualties. More than half, about 620,000 died. Putting brother against brother this war left mothers with bleeding hearts, incapable of doing anything to quash sibling rivalry. The War threatened not only to split the nation apart but the very fiber of society—the family. With more than another century passed, has America remembered the lessons of that conflagration?

World War I was the first “industrially produced” war. The rapid fire of an automatic machine gun made warfare more efficient. Ironically—and fortunately, this war did not outpace the Civil War in casualties. It did not even come close. For that we must remember World War II.

World War II is the war of infamy. 61 Million Souls[iii]were lost in this war. America’s tally was half what it was in the Civil War. But the toll across the globe was staggering. Russia, alone suffered a hellish loss, with 2/3 of their losses in civilians. What lessons do the memories produce for us of these two global conflicts?

The Korean War brought the first modern concept of warfare for Americans—governance by an international body outside the United States. It netted the first failure to achieve what was intended and expected—to win. Excepting the Civil War, from this time forward guerrilla[iv]tactics, rather than gallantry and chivalry in battle were the game plan. All was not "fair" in war again.

In the World Wars, if your opponent was not equally armored, particularly fighter pilots, a foe would tip a hat or a wing and retreat because it was not considered a fair (equal) fight. Additionally, there was no question who your enemy was; each side, as had been done for centuries, identified themselves in full dress and colors. Guerrilla warfare, the system of battle since Korea, designated everyone in camouflage fatigues to blend with the landscape. It used psychological strategy as well as a no holds barred, unconventional approach to assault and defense. What do the memories of these wars produce? Indeed, in war strategy, we have evolved. But as human beings, have we learned from the American Revolution and instilled the original ideal as we have progressed through time?

Clearly, we have engaged in justified wars and in some that have confused us. Some have reiterated the virtues for which America was conceived. Others have questioned our integrity—or constancy—as a nation of ideals. The question as we remember those who have passed on, and who paid a price, either small or great on our behalf is to what end do we remember? We must not only remember the people, but what they stood for—what they knew they stood for.

America, arguably, is at a crossroads to either protect or abandon the first intentions and expectations of Colonial heroes. We must learn from our memories what will help us to avoid repetition of sins past, and increase tenacity to preserve those qualities behind the noblest actions. Anything else is nothing more than vain and ill-defined memory.

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.

Let our memories cause us to commit to what needs doing this Memorial Day in the same way those who first sacrificed for this country, and those subsequently, that future memorials will hold less loss--by war or incivility, and more of their intention by their sacrifice, as Lieutenant John McCrae so poignantly pleaded.

---

[i] http://www.usmemorialday.org/backgrnd.html

[ii] http://www.phil.muni.cz/~vndrzl/amstudies/civilwar_stats.htm

[iii] http://bss.sfsu.edu/tygiel/hist427/texts/wwiicasualty.htm

[iv] http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/defn/guerril.htm