By Randy Rogers
I read where it all started in 1864 – when Gettysburg, Penn., widows placed flowers on the graves of their fallen Civil War soldiers. The next year, Southern women decorated the graves of fallen soldiers at a Cemetery in Vicksburg, Miss..
Later, in April 1866, women from Columbus, Miss., laid flowers on the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers. In the same month, in Carbondale, Ill., 219 Civil War veterans marched through town in memory of the fallen to Woodlawn Cemetery.
It was once referred to as Decorations Day and – in 1967 by Federal law – became what we know today as an official day of remembrance – our Memorial on the last Monday in May.
Some people understandably confuse Memorial Day with Veteran’s Day. The difference is this: Every year, on the last Monday in May we remember the fallen – those who didn’t come home from the battlefield. On November 11th; we honor all veterans who served their country in the military.
I’m sure some took into consideration the fact they might not come back, while some didn’t. Some were asked to land on an enemy-occupied beach where the wave before them lay on the beach dead and dying. They had to know death was eminent. Yet, because of their training, duty, and loyalty to each other – as the bullets rained down – they charged up a hill for the last time, for an eternity that took them to this, their, our Memorial Day.
Someone once said that the reason a country sends their youngest into battle is that most of them are too young to believe they can die at a young age. Some that served and died were enlisted, some were drafted. Some went to military school and made officers; some came right off the farm and went to the infantry, some jumped out of airplanes over enemy lines. Some served on ships and in submarines.
I can’t help wondering how different life would be – had those service men and women we honor on Memorial Day made it home. How many cancer-curing doctors did we lose at Gettysburg, Normandy, Chosen Reservoir, the jungle and rice patties of Vietnam, the sands of Iraq or the mountains of Afghanistan? How many Nobel Prize-winning scientist do you think are lying under those grave markers at Arlington Memorial? How many great fathers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and grandparents might they have made – if given the chance? Of course; we’ll never know the answer to those questions.
When Abraham Lincoln gave his Gettysburg address, he wrote in the book of history these immortal words: “that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.”
So what do we owe these veterans? In a word: Everything. When it came to uniforms; some wore white, some blue, some green and some khaki. When their time was up, their number got called, the only colors they had in common were red white and blue.
Had many of them not paid the ultimate sacrifice; this would be a different world today. In our history; we’ve had serious people wanting to do us serious harm. They gave up their lives, their futures, their families, their fortunes while asking for nothing in return – all with the hope that we could defeat an enemy that threatened our way of life.
I hope all Americans will take the time to acknowledge the meaning of this day. And appreciate that those we honor, in a heartbeat, would gladly traded places with us today. And, when you stop to think about it; it was just one heartbeat that made the difference.
