Memorial Day

I stood on the concrete pier on Monday in a cold wind. The parade was small, a few old soldiers, some Boy Scouts, a couple of honor guards carrying the flags, and out in front two bag pipers with the hauntingly beautiful sound of America’s songs.

My eyes focused on an old man, he could have been 80 or 90 years old more or less, wearing an old Army uniform coat, walking unsteadily on a cane. The jacket was adorned with a chest full of medals, not just the colored bars we see so frequently, but the kind that hang from ribbons, gold or bronze, and he wore a smile a mile wide.

How many lives had he saved? How many hills had he taken, how many machine gun nests had he charged, how many rounds had pierced his body, how long had he fought under that flag that waved above him suspended high in the air from the ladders of two fire trucks?

Because he, and almost countless others, chose to defend freedom, bear the burden of war, leave home and family, and the relative safety of his home town, I would stand this day in the greatest Country in the World and know the freedoms that make life worth living.

I’ll never even know his name. And there are so few left who fought in theatres around the World. We did not say, “Thank you,” enough. We did not give to those old soldiers the honor they deserved, the praise they earned, and the resources that should accrue to men who give so much of their life in the cause of liberty.

We have another opportunity, with younger men and women, to try again to express, by whatever means, our incredible gratitude for “all who give some, and some who give all,” that freedom and liberty might reign from “sea to shining sea.”