Just a thought on this Memorial Day!!

I do not handle Memorial Day very well. I usually try to be doing something that keeps me occupied mentally. I remember too many people that I personally knew that gave their ALL for this Great Country.

There are not any words that can fully cover that simple FACT. These men and women gave their most precious thing, LIFE, in the service of their country. Many times this was not deliberate: Men hit by mortar fire rarely think they are going to be hit. There where times though when the fellow KNEW the odds where against him. He did what he felt needed to be done anyway. This many times was to protect or save his fellow soldiers. There are not word or metals/honors that can fully describe or honor this.

I am alive today because of actions taken in that frame of mind. Some of those fellows did not make it home. Amazingly most did. It is hard to see God's plan in those times.

So all I can do is THANK those men that came home under a flag. They will live forever in my minds eye.

I can not hear Taps being played without tears coming to my eyes. I can not visit the wall and read the names. I just am not strong enough to do that.

So this afternoon I took a walk in the pasture by myself. I talked to those men that have been gone for over forty years. I spoke their names and told them anything I knew about their families I told them how they where missed by their family and friends. I also shed quite a few tears too.

So here is my thought: BE glad that many of you, maybe most, do not know anyone , personally, that paid the ultimate price for freedom. This means that we have not had to have hundreds of thousands of men and women lost. I hope that remains a fact for a long time.

THANKS To those that have fallen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

well said I tear up to.

JD;

Thanks for such a heart-felt testament. I was there, but always in a base camp/city. It was the guys like you and your buddies that kept us safe.

Someone posted on social media a picture of a young boy, maybe 7 or 8 receiving the folded flag from his father's service. He stood bravely and proudly but you could see how hard he was fighting back tears. A very powerful image.

As I get older, I find it harder to get through "America h Beautiful" and other patriotic songs. I get too choked up. And Taps always brings tears.

Thank you for your service and God bless you.

Larry

JD,
That is one of the best Memorial Day tributes I have ever read. Thank you.

I'm a southern boy whose great-grandfathers fought under the Stars and Bars, but I'm a great admirer of Mr. Lincoln. In my opinion nobody expressed the Memorial Day concept better than he did in the Gettysburg Address. If you haven't read it in a while take the time to do so. Eternal truths, so eloquently and beautifully stated:


"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Visited the graveside of one of my ancestors yesterday.



The stars and bars have been replaced with a "politically correct" flag on all the Confederate veteran's graves.

James, one of my great-grandfathers was in the 25th Texas Cavalry. He was captured at Ft. Hindman, Ark., in 1863, later paroled, and served out the war in Tennessee and Georgia.

My paternal great-grandfather served in 19th Louisiana infantry. Fought at Shiloh, Corinth, Chicamauga (wounded), Chattanooga, Franklin, Resaca, Atlanta, and several others. Was captured in a last-ditch stand at Spanish Fort, Ala., near the end of the war. He survived all that to come home and get shot in the back in Logansport in 1875. I've got the shirt he was wearing that day.

Capt. Russell was killed in a fight defending a former slave.

The black man was "swindled" out of a mule by another man and Capt. Russell took up for him.

I somehow doubt that my great-grandfather's demise was precipitated by any such noble action. It happened in front of a saloon.

I was at Antietam one week ago. I was fighting back tears as I walked across The Cornfield. Have a ancestor who marched into hell across that field, but he made it through the war.

Thank you for your well thought words.

And thanks to you, J D, for eloquently reminding us. Also thanks Jerry S for adding Pres. Lincoln's enduring words.
Rand

Thanks for your words. I find myself becoming more emotional as well. I really noticed a difference after 911. I cried like a baby when the Royal Guard played the National Anthem the evening of 911. I'm not sure why, but I suspect it's because the fight is now on our soil and so many have lost their lives to keep that from happening.
I keep wondering if I should see someone, or just keep toughing it out.
Thanks for all you have done for our country!
Larry

Anymore, I tear up at parades, the playing of The National Anthem, war memorials, and "Ragged Old Flag"
Ragged Old Flag