Memorial Day

[abisel]

THIS is what Memorial Day is about. So when you have your BBQ and toast a beer to the beginning of summer, take a minute to remember the fallen.

[Chocaholic]

Incredible picture. With a son in the army, the commitment to ensuring our freedom hits home. Thanks for sharing. Godspeed to all who have perished for our country. And thank-you to the men and women that have served and are currently serving.

To you!

[Baz]

Originally Posted by abisel

THIS is what Memorial Day is about. So when you have your BBQ and toast a beer to the beginning of summer, take a minute to remember the fallen.

Amen, brother.

Little more on that iconic photo:

Terry Dutcher grieves in front of the grave of her son, Army Corporal Michael Avery Pursel, who died serving in Iraq in 2007 at the age of 19, as soldiers place flags at each grave for the annual "Flags-In" in honor of Memorial Day, at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, capital of the United States, on May 24, 2012.

[RNajarian]

Amen. Rest In Peace Departed Brothers and Sisters.

Those of us who served with you will never forget your faces and dedication. Memorial Day is everyday for us.

Feelings of guilt,

“Why did I come home?”
“Could I have done something more to save you?
“Did I do something wrong that put you in jeopardy?”
“If I did do something wrong, would you forgive me?”
“I’m sorry.”


Here is a photo of my son “meeting” His Uncle HN Michael A. Najarian, died June 16, 1966 in the Quang Nam province of Viet Nam. He was a hospital corpsman embedded with the Marines. . .

To all we have lost. . . we remember, and humbly thank you for your gift.

[flatbutt]

The first in my neighborhood to give all in VietNam. I remember.


Vincent James Gabriel Jr



ON THE WALL:
Panel 20E Line 83

Paterson, NJ Date of birth:10/07/1945
United States Marine Corps E2 Private First Class

HQ BTRY, 3RD BN, 12TH MARINES, 3RD MARDIV, III MAF
Casualty Date: 05/22/1967
Location: Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam
Casualty Detail: Artillery, rocket, or mortar

[KFC911]

Thank you for this thread...

[bob deluke]

Going to my folks gravesite today to put flowers by the headstone. Dad was a WWll Navy vet serving in the Pacific on the USS Wisconsin. I had 7 uncles, all passed but they all served in WWI and WWII. Lots of old salt stories when I was a youngster. I went in the Navy during Nam, and Lost a couple of friends there. They are buried in a national cemetery. Still think of them regularly. We were just kids then....

[Jolly Amaranto]

At Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day in 2006.

[pwd72s]

It's rare to find someone of my age group who doesn't have a friend or relative with his name on that wall. Young men die so others can enjoy life. That wall pic really touched me..

[Por_sha911]

TY. Memorial Day in America has become a party, big sale at the mall or car sale day. Also it is to remember those who gave their life and not for living military or veterans.

[Jolly Amaranto]

My grandfather's brother was killed in New Guinea. When my family was living in the Philippines outside Clark AFB in 1960, we visited his grave in Manila.
Manila American Cemetery | American Battle Monuments Commission

[porsche5k]

I appreciate the thread. Thank you all for the perspective.

[Tobra]

[Seahawk]

I return to this article nearly every year:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118014402282815483

Read the whole thing.

Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: those who had given all their tomorrows, as was said of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, for our todays. But in a world saturated with selfhood, where every death is by definition a death in vain, the notion of sacrifice today provokes puzzlement more often than admiration. We support the troops, of course, but we also believe that war, being hell, can easily touch them with an evil no cause for engagement can wash away. And in any case we are more comfortable supporting them as victims than as warriors.

Former football star Pat Tillman and Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham were killed on the same day: April 22, 2004. But as details of his death fitfully emerged from Afghanistan, Tillman has become a metaphor for the current conflict–a victim of fratricide, disillusionment, coverup and possibly conspiracy. By comparison, Dunham, who saved several of his comrades in Iraq by falling on an insurgent’s grenade, is the unknown soldier. The New York Times, which featured Abu Ghraib on its front page for 32 consecutive days, put the story of Dunham’s Medal of Honor on the third page of section B.

Not long ago I was asked to write the biographical sketches for a book featuring formal photographs of all our living Medal of Honor recipients. As I talked with them, I was, of course, chilled by the primal power of their stories. But I also felt pathos: They had become strangers–honored strangers, but strangers nonetheless–in our midst.

***

In my own boyhood, figures such as Jimmy Doolittle, Audie Murphy and John Basilone were household names. And it was assumed that what they had done defined us as well as them, telling us what kind of nation we were. But the 110 Medal recipients alive today are virtually unknown except for a niche audience of warfare buffs. Their heroism has become the military equivalent of genre painting. There’s something wrong with that.

What they did in battle was extraordinary. Jose Lopez, a diminutive Mexican-American from the barrio of San Antonio, was in the Ardennes forest when the Germans began the counteroffensive that became the Battle of the Bulge. As 10 enemy soldiers approached his position, he grabbed a machine gun and opened fire, killing them all. He killed two dozen more who rushed him. Knocked down by the concussion of German shells, he picked himself up, packed his weapon on his back and ran toward a group of Americans about to be surrounded. He began firing and didn’t stop until all his ammunition and all that he could scrounge from other guns was gone. By then he had killed over 100 of the enemy and bought his comrades time to establish a defensive line.

Yet their stories were not only about killing. Several Medal of Honor recipients told me that the first thing they did after the battle was to find a church or some other secluded spot where they could pray, not only for those comrades they’d lost but also the enemy they’d killed.

Desmond Doss, for instance, was a conscientious objector who entered the army in 1942 and became a medic. Because of his religious convictions and refusal to carry a weapon, the men in his unit intimidated and threatened him, trying to get him to transfer out. He refused and they grudgingly accepted him. Late in 1945 he was with them in Okinawa when they got cut to pieces assaulting a Japanese stronghold.

Everyone but Mr. Doss retreated from the rocky plateau where dozens of wounded remained. Under fire, he treated them and then began moving them one by one to a steep escarpment where he roped them down to safety. Each time he succeeded, he prayed, “Dear God, please let me get just one more man.” By the end of the day, he had single-handedly saved 75 GIs.

Why did they do it? Some talked of entering a zone of slow-motion invulnerability, where they were spectators at their own heroism. But for most, the answer was simpler and more straightforward: They couldn’t let their buddies down.

Big for his age at 14, Jack Lucas begged his mother to help him enlist after Pearl Harbor. She collaborated in lying about his age in return for his promise to someday finish school. After training at Parris Island, he was sent to Honolulu. When his unit boarded a troop ship for Iwo Jima, Mr. Lucas was ordered to remain behind for guard duty. He stowed away to be with his friends and, discovered two days out at sea, convinced his commanding officer to put him in a combat unit rather than the brig. He had just turned 17 when he hit the beach, and a day later he was fighting in a Japanese trench when he saw two grenades land near his comrades.

He threw himself onto the grenades and absorbed the explosion. Later a medic, assuming he was dead, was about to take his dog tag when he saw Mr. Lucas’s finger twitch. After months of treatment and recovery, he returned to school as he’d promised his mother, a ninth-grader wearing a Medal of Honor around his neck.

Open the link and finish reading it.

Best to all and especially to my brothers, and one sister, in arms who are no longer with us.

[flatbutt]

"By the end of the day, he had single-handedly saved 75 GIs."

No honorific, no medal, no words of praise can ever match Cpl Doss' deed of heroism, and selfless humanism. How do you properly honor someone who saved 75 soldiers and by extension 75 families? Every time I read his story, stunned am I...every time.

[Baz]

[Racerbvd]

Someone in the neighborhood makes these signs and puts them on a tree in the middle of the road a s you leave.

[Racerbvd]

[rfuerst911sc]

So many have given the ultimate sacrifice we should never forget and always honor . RIP to all .

[abisel]

Normandy France American Cemetery, July 2007.