Honoring the Fallen
Mates,
Memorial Day isn't like other holidays, it is in reality a somber reminder of those who gave their lives for our country. Tradition says that flags should be at half-mast from sunrise to noon, then raised fully. There is an old saying, "All gave some, but some gave all" that captures the essence of what the fallen gave: their own dreams, their hopes, their families and of course their lives.
While most of us have the day off, maybe take a minute to ponder the sacrifice of others that has lead to so much of what we call freedom and prosperity. Think of and maybe reach out to surviving family members of the fallen. And while it's not Veterans Day, it is worth noting that those folks, too, signed up to be in the position to make that same sacrifice. A hat tip to the many veterans on this list. Thank you for your service.
Go Blue
XM
My respect, admiration, and appreciation to all those who have served our country. Not only today, but every day.
God Bless America!
I hope y'all have a good Memorial Day and take the time to appreciate the ultimate sacrifice of our fallen vetarans.
I had the distinct pleasure of watching one of our squad leaders in infantry school get selected for 8th and I as a body bearer, one of the most elite specialties in the corps.
It's hard for me to imagine a more important and sacred responsibility than that of laying our fallen to rest.
i have seen but not attended military funerals. funerals for police officers are similar in nature, and i have been to too many of those. two in particular haunt me to this day.
There was a military salute and flag ceremony at my Dad's Funeral. It moved me greatly. I really appreciated those military men who performed it.
Also, one of my most dear friends (a Vietnam vet) had a military funeral that had both Navy and Army military representatives (and representatives from the Arizona Rangers). A bag piper participated too. It was very moving ceremony.
Great video MgoHillbilly. Thanks to you and all who served and especially those that gave their lives.
Shout-out to my Dad and all of his shipmates that served on the USS Cowpens.
RIP 🙏
To those who gave their all.
Very well-said, XM.
It’s hard not be emotional thinking about the extraordinary circumstances of war, Especially the Vietnam war. My heart and soul has the highest respect for all those that have served.
may we never lose our unwavering support for our troops and country!
Big military history buff. WW2 was extraordinary as well, the Germans for their Blitzkrieg and crimes against humanity and the Japanese for their ferocity.
Agree wholeheartedly with the well-written OP. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to many who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom.
I didn’t mean to imply Vietnam was the most hellish of wars, just was top of mind as I was visiting with my father in law who was a member of the Seawolves
The Japanese committed as many crimes against humanity as the Germans, and maybe more. It just didn't happen in Europe or involve many Europeans, so are less-well-known than those of Germany.
The Japanese have so thoroughly gotten away with it in the West that a fairly recent Hollywood movie could actually show the Japanese Navy murdering American POWs and then dedicate the film to them. SMH
Memorial Day has taken on a new meaning the last few decades knowing that there really hasn't been a war we've needed to be part of and that people haven't needlessly been sent to their deaths in 70 or 80 years
Not the time nor place my friend
I might argue the opposite. Their sacrifice is no less honorable. They gave the greatest gift they could for their country. Days like this should remind us that we need to be ever vigilant that the country lives up to that sacrifice and is worthy of their gift and does not take lightly sending our youth off to war. Maybe a yearly reminder that there are things more important than D or R, or red or blue
I’m not saying I disagree with you or the previous poster, but that is not what today is about.
Not the time to inject politics so I won't get involved in it.
I drive by a VA Military cemetery every work day. As I drive past the rows and rows of graves I always remind myself of their sacrifice and how their lives were cut short to defend, for right or wrong, our country and freedoms. On Thursday, several boy scout troops were out starting to put up flags on each grave.
Much respect and gratitude.
The ultimate sacrifice.
I honor each and every one.
My great-uncle was killed on Luzon in the Philippines on St. Patrick's Day, 1945. He was a lieutenant in command of the Intelligence and Recon platoon in the 25th Division. Some years ago, I contacted a group of veterans of the 25th, asking if anyone might have known him. To my surprise, I got three responses from men who had served under him. They all told me he was a good officer, the hard-working kind who said "Follow me" instead of just ordering "Go," and they were lucky to have him. Not for the first time, I wish I'd gotten to know him.
Rest in peace, Uncle George, and a salute to all the men and women whom this day honors.
The day was created to commemorate the deaths of Union troops. Thoughts first ought to go to the men who wore the Federal Blue. In our time it is important more than ever to remember the consequences of bitter political hatred, self-interest, and notions of racial supremacy.
The men of the United States Colored Troops are the greatest example of Americans fighting for physical liberty in our history. Not political liberty as in the Revolution, but the literal physical destruction of manacles that kept millions of their brethren in bondage.
I just recently learned that I had four ancestors on my maternal grandmother’s side who served in the Confederate army in the 25th and 62nd North Carolina. Four brothers. Three would die during the course of the war from disease. My ggg-grandfather survived three years in Camp Douglas in Chicago. His brother did not.
I had a more distant relative on my dad’s side serve in the Union army in the 12th Michigan. He too died of disease. He was 18.
When we think of death in war we think of soldiers dying violently on a battlefield, not from disease in a field hospital. For a great many Americans in both the Civil War and World War I their deaths were of the latter, more mundane type.
My Southern ancestors served and died for a terrible cause. One that is as ignoble as any in history. It is tragic for a person to lose their life in war. It’s especially tragic and disappointing when that person dies for a cause that is entirely unworthy of their sacrifice.
Today, when you think of those who died, do also consider the justice of the war in which they perished. Do so so we may never again ask men and women to die for causes that are neither just or moral.
Well said. Indeed tragic for all the fallen.
The Confederacy is and was an abomination that needed to be wiped from the earth, but I believe it difficult and perhaps unrealistic to judge history through the lens of the present and warfare through the lens of humanity.
I agree whole heartedly that we should strive to avoid unjust wars and never return to the barbarity and immorality of such times (specifically slavery in the US per your post), but we must also wrestle with and empathize with the reality of how time and chance placed many of those men in their respective situations at the time.
I am hopeful that 150 years from now folks will look back at much of our current behavior and conflicts and believe them immoral, unjust, idiotic, barbaric, etc...as I do believe that the arc of the moral universe, while long, does indeed bend towards justice and decency.
Wasn’t going to start, but the civil was a continuation of napoleons total warfare. We, as in humans, didn’t understand the power of technology in warfare. Remember, the machine gun (I know this is a misnomer) was in existence during the civil war. By WWI, not a generation or two later, we mastered total warfare and still didn’t understand technology. The total warfare was taught via the civil war, and the German French war of the 1880s-1890s. Gloves were on in this conflict. Gloves were off in WWI. 1/3 of fighting age French men died to prove a losing argument. So glad we aren’t rattling the cages of the dogs of war today.
I tried to avoid getting even marginally involved in politics on Memorial Day but i have to ask why you believe the Korean War was immoral, unjust, etc.
Amen.
Read today that two grandsons of Paul Revere were killed in the Civil War.
I looked for info and found this from 2012:
https://civilwarsaga.com/paul-reveres-grandsons-fought-in-the-civil-war/
Much respect for my Grandfather and everyone else who are no longer with us.
God Bless America! 🇺🇸
Freedom isn’t free my friends.
Today is a good day to put aside our petty problems and remember our real ones that we all share. I often sit and wonder with our current generation if war is even something we are capable of anymore or if it's been bred out of us. To those that did make the sacrifice, and to the families some of them left behind, my family thanks you for your service to this great nation.
Stop and think about it - so many men, and women, of all ages are no longer with us nor with their families as they followed a sense of duty and patriotism to defend our countries interests all around the world. Gives me chills. I could not even begin to fathom the loss, if say one of my kids also made the ultimate sacrifice.
As XM said so well, like he always does, if you know a family who has lost a loved one, reach out to them to let them know that they are not forgotten! America!!!
Thank you to everyone who has served, or is currently actively serving. Im grateful for you all. God bless you and rest in paradise to all who died protecting all of us
🇺🇸
Deepest gratitude for those that made the ultimate sacrifice.
My dad served in a Marine Combined Action Platoon in Vietnam. I never really knew much about it (he doesn't talk about it) but found a website that talked about what they did. It's a really interesting history. A squad of Marines basically living in hamlets with the Vietnamese, often times help was pretty far away if needed.
Was even able to find his unit with the names of many of the people he served with.
Also, if you haven't checked it out, the Virtual Wall is an amazing, and sobering, experience.
I had the honor of serving with a guy in the 24th MEU who had this picture on his wall. A famous photo from the Korean War showing his dad. The caption and his face say it all.
It has nothing however on this picture of his grandfather on Okinawa performing a funeral for his uncle.
epic picture, and the second one even more so, read the caption: "US Marine Colonel Francis Fenton conducting the funeral of his son Private First Class Mike Fenton..."
i can't even imagine. God bless that family.
Father and son met once during the fighting when their paths crossed at a partially destroyed Okinawan farmhouse. After exchanging news from home, including information on Michael's older brother, Francis, Jr., who had been commissioned a Marine officer in 1941, the two family members returned to their work.
They would never talk again. On May 7, 1945, while beating back a Japanese counterattack not far from Sugar Loaf Hill, 19-year-old Pfc. Michael Fenton was killed. When his father received the bitter news, he traveled to the site of his son's death and knelt down to pray over the flag-draped body, a scene that produced one of the Pacific war's most touching photographs. Upon arising, Colonel Fenton stared at the bodies of other Marine dead and said, 'Those poor souls. They didn't have their fathers here.'
thanks for sharing! that 2nd picture is something else.
liberty requires vigilance & sacrifice
Thanks comes nowhere near enough to show my appreciation to those who made the ultimate sacrifice so I could live my life in our free country.
Thanks also to those volunteers who help mark the graves honoring veterans with flags. My wife is a "graver" who helps identify old graves ( military and otherwise) and enter them into genealogical databases. We were at two cemeteries in rural Ann Arbor today.
One had Michiganders who fought in the Civil War. I couldn't help but think about those Wolverines. The Michigan Cavalry Brigade, sometimes called the Wolverines, or Custer's Brigade were instrumental in winning the war for the Union Army.
Far more instrumental to winning th war for the Union was the 24th Michigan, part of the legendary Iron Brigade (1st Brigade, 1st Division, I Corps). At Gettysburg, during the critical first day of action, the Iron Brigade slowed the Confederate advance and preserved Cemetery Ridge for the rest of the army to form on. The 24th Michigan lost 397 out of 496 soldiers, an 80% casualty rate, the second-highest loss rate of the battle - and the war - behind the magnificent 1st Minnesota. The Brigade as a whole went into the battle with 1885 men and mustered only 671 on July 4th.
The Last Full Measure of Devotion, indeed.
Rest in peace, brothers and sisters.
These were answers I got from two uncles, my father in law, and an older business associate of mine - each one Jewish, each one serving in WW2. They each told me that they enlisted to stop the "madness" from reaching their families in the States (they knew the reason the letters had stopped coming from the family members who remained in the old country) and then to "wipe out the enemy for good".
They each made it home safely.
Attending their funerals later in life. Hearing taps, watching the folded flag be handed to a survivor, hearing the fired volleys in salute, you know the somber dignity and deep emotions that come with burying a service member.
April marked the 13th anniversary of my wife's cousin, who became one of my best friends, being killed in Afghanistan. He was the greatest person I ever met. He served 4 years and did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as a member of the 101st Airborne.
He spent 18 months as a civilian and reenlisted. He couldn't take the guilt of having lost so many comrades. He went back in as a combat medic. The night before he redeployed, he pretty much told us he wasn't coming back. Turns out he was right. As always.
I think about him literally every single day. His family had those rubber bracelets (Lance Armstrong style) made, and I still wear it everyday. I'm on my 4th, and last known example, because the wear down and break.
My wife and I got married the following August. He would have been a groomsman had he been able to. Our favorite wedding photo is us holding a picture of him in uniform. I had ny own military career cut short due to an ankle injury, so the guilt is multiplied when I realize how little a difference I made in comparison to him. But I know he'd beat the shit out of me for ever thinking like that.
/sorry kinda tldr
Not to denigrate any of those who have fallen and those who have served or do serve who I honor but I have two words that sum this day up to me...Pat Tillman. May he Rest In Peace.
Honor and virtue need to gain prominence. One to stand tall and one to cherish. Vanguards against time and its governance.
The same Pat Tillman who was killed by friendly fire weeks before he was about to speak out against the war and whose death (potentially assassination) was covered up by the US government. Those are details that should never been forgotten
Truth.
https://www.historynet.com/pat-tillman-afghanistan/
"On April 22, just two weeks into the deployment, Pat was killed. A day later superiors submitted a Silver Star recommendation that claimed Tillman had “put himself in the line of devastating enemy fire” during an ambush. The recommendation quickly went up the chain of command, along with a posthumous promotion to corporal. News accounts parroted the official line Pat had succumbed to enemy fire while saving fellow Rangers. Within weeks, however, that version of events began unraveling.
In fact, on the afternoon of Pat’s death headquarters had ordered Black Sheep commander 1st Lt. David Uthlaut to split his platoon to meet a predetermined time line. As they threaded through steep-walled valleys in their Humvees and Toyota Hilux pickups, the platoon’s two sections lost radio contact with each other. The trailing section, whose members included Kevin Tillman, soon came under ambush by mortars and small arms from the hills above.
As members of the other section, including Pat, dismounted from their vehicles and rushed to help, trigger-happy Rangers—many in their first firefight—mistook Pat and fellow rescuers for enemy combatants. They killed Sayed Farhad, an Afghan ally. Standing beside Farhad, Pat took an initial 5.56-caliber round to the chest, then three more to the right forehead, likely from a SAW. According to fellow Ranger Pfc. Bryan O’Neal, as he and his teammates came under fire, Pat waved his arms over his head, yelling, “I’m Pat Tillman! I’m Pat f______ Tillman! Why are you shooting at me?!...
...In 2008 the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a report, “Misleading Information From the Battlefield: The Tillman and Lynch Episodes,” detailing the damage done by deliberate deception in both cases. “The bare minimum we owe our soldiers and their families is the truth,” said committee chairman Henry Waxman. “That didn’t happen for two of the most famous soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. For Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman the government violated its basic responsibility.”
Let’s just honor Pat and not chase the abyss that is the internet.
I am well aware of these circumstances and you are not wrong but the honor he earned is not diminished by other humans’ frailties.
i have a family member that was a ranger at that time. to put it in his terms, still maintaining opsec, much of what was reported over there was 'fiction'. that doesn't diminish the heroism of guys like tillman and the reason we honor them on this day.
and this is not the thread for crazy conspiracy theories like the one spouted above re: purposeful assassination.
Ditto.
I'm just man enough to admit I never was man enough to join the Armed Forces. Deep respect to those who sacrificed so much.