Memorial Day

[jackd]

I always have mixed feelings about Memorial Day.  I feel respect for the military personnel who have died and been injured doing what they felt was their duty for the country.  I also mourn the many civilians who have died and been injured in the course of those military engagements and I recall the bitter reflections of men, such as General Smedley Butler of the Marines, challenging the justice of many of those military engagements and the horrible waste of life and property involved.  It's generally celebrated as a kind of gateway to summer with attendant barbecues and other social gatherings on a long weekend.  I don't begrudge people that, particularly in light of the pandemic we've been through and that continues.  A few minutes of sober reflection and mourning, not just for the fallen military, but for all of us, and the world's suffering, seem in order as well.

[Deleted]

Seems The scotch didn't sit well with jack this evening. Ponder away my friend.

[jackd]

It wasn't the Scotch; it was the history. Not pondering; mourning, and, frankly, worrying about what the near future may bring.

[andydp]

On Memorial Day and Veteran's Day I usually post a poem by English Officer Siegfried Sassoon. One of the WWI Poets.

I think every politician who wants to send our people into "harm's way" should read this (especially the last stanza) a few times

Suicide in the Trenches
by Siegfried Sassoon


I knew a simple soldier boy

Who grinned at life in empty joy,

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,

And whistled early with the lark.


In winter trenches, cowed and glum,

With crumps and lice and lack of rum,

He put a bullet through his brain.

No one spoke of him again.


You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you'll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go.