RIP Uncle Robert.
https://www.tracesofwar.com/sights/151029/Memorial-Crew-B24-Liberator-%E2%80%98Miss-I-Hope%E2%80%99.htm

For this sacred Day of Remembrance and Gratitude…

Gerard Van Der Leun was one of the finest essayists I have ever read. He died a few years ago but left an incredible body of work, now (alas) consigned to memory only. Archived for two years, then no more.

One piece has survived however; and I give abundant thanks to his dear friend who in eulogizing him managed to save his finest, most moving personal essay, one I try to post each Memorial Day. 

I can never read this without sinking into deep thought, with reverence for the memories of those men and women who served in our Armed Forces, hoping to return home to those who loved them, but did not.

With deep honour for their ultimate sacrifices, I leave Mr Van Der Leun’s masterpiece for every brother and sister in our Tree…

(The Substack in which “The Name In The Stone” can be found is worth a read. But for those who may wish not to, scroll through…the essay is further down.)

https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/remembering-gerard-van-der-leun-bon

Thank you Menagerie for posting. The Ringgold Georgia people are a good example of what and where we should all be today.

Thank you for always posting this important reminder that it’s not about furniture or car sales, or about hamburgers on the grill. We remember those who gave all for our country. God bless them.

Amen.

Thank you Menagerie!

(Posted on Presidential thread).

I didn’t know you Captain George I Mims Jr. but I think of you and wear a bracelet remembering you every Memorial Day weekend..
“Capt. George Mims Jr. 12-20-65”. MIA

❤️

Thank you, Dad (SSG James C Bucherl), for your 34 years in the military police. Thank you for always being formidable, unapologetic, and striking fear in evil. You served this country in the U.S. Army by serving South Korea to establish and administer the training of their own military police officers to the tune of 400 men a year. You were something else. If you were alive today – you would have stormed the Capital in the coup – because you would surely know – what this was.

I am grateful you are in our Heavenly Home and this depravity no longer harms you. I am grateful you raised me alone as a single parent after Mom died when I was 9. I was probably your most formidable task – because you had no experience with young ladies and barely of marriage to Mom – you were gone so much from our lives. Little girls and frilly things – totally a foreign threat. Thanks for putting a hammer in my hands and teaching me to build things. I use your wisdom to this day.

Thanks for being the essence of toxic masculinity. You are my hero. Even in death at the Indiana Veterans Cemetery – Savannah and I would laugh that those interred there were still protecting us – because the military guns are pointed towards the Madison County Jail that is adjacent to the grounds. Even in death, Sir, you made us laugh. Wish you could have known Savannah. You only got to hold her as a baby, but she was your pride and joy. And you told me – “Well, Joanie – God finally gave you someone to love.”

Yes, Dad. Be her guardian angel now and forever. Can’t wait to see you again, as I understand so much more about you now… than I ever did.

Thank you to you and our veterans who are underpaid, underappreciated, misunderstood, and often displaced and deprecated. I’ll keep marching like you taught me.

I look forward to this post every year. It never fails as a reminder of the cost of freedom.

It’s especially moving in that they do not just raise flags for this day but they raise them with the names of our honored dead.

Godspeed to one & all, rest in God’s Eternal Peace. Thank you.

Some gave all. May they rest in eternal peace.

Amen.
1st Lt. Frank K. Evans, 397th Bomb Group, 597th Bomb Squadron, KIA 5/13/1944 over France.
2nd Lt. Hulen L. Stromquist, USMC, 2nd MAR DIV, 10th Marines, KIA 7/31/1944 Tinian Island
Cpl. Patrick S. Cochran, USMC 3rd MAR DIV, 26th Marines, KIA 8/21/1967 Viet Nam

83’ wooden hulled WWII US Coast Guard boats, part of the “Rescue Flotilla” (a/k/a “The Matchbox Fleet”) tasked with pulling our wounded troops off the beach and out of the water (many of the landing craft swamped) during The Normandy Invasion / D-Day, June 6th, 1944.

My Dad was on one of these vessels and there for the invasion. We lost him in 2013.

Getting him to talk about what he did, saw and experienced was tough, but I learned more from him than any other man on earth and miss him 🇺🇸🫡

The Virtual Wall

Vietnam Veterans Memorial

https://www.virtualwall.org/index.html

Best Memorial speech ever made:

Delivered at Gettysburg, Pa.

Nov. 19th 1863.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. “But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

My late uncle Neal served his country during the Vietnam War, and never got injured while over there. But then, while home on leave, was killed in a car accident in which his vehicle was violently broadsided. He was 24. Thank you for your service, uncle Neal. By the grace of God, we will never forget you and the many others who dedicated their lives and honor to the preservation of the people of this Republic.

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” – John 15:13

J

Remembering my father and stepfather who both served in the Navy in WE II, father in-law who was a marine, and all the great veterans who paid the price.

One of my most cherished memories as a young boy were those with my dad the week leading up to Decoration Day. Every year he would take me with him. We would visit at six or more cemeteries in the area. My father had a long list of names and graves that he was responsible for as a member of the VFW and as a decorated WWII veteran himself.

Our job was to clean the bronze flag holders, and place a fresh, new American flag in the holder. I recall him pausing at the grave and saying a short silent prayer before moving to the next one.

I miss my father most on days like today.

Mark Twain ” The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” These men and women lived fully . May God always bless them.

For those that sacrificed their tomorrows so that others could live their tomorrows.

TY for the Special Forum
There Can Never Be Enough THANK YOUs for America’s Military People Current, Vets, Family and Those Passed Away

THANK YOU A Million Times Over, American Military People , For Your Many Sacrifices in Serving In America’s Military

Sundance Thank you for posting this. My father, and two brothers did their duties., my dad was in WWII Nayy, he was the missile man that put them in the shoots on the sub. Extremely strong man. My Aunt said he was so impatient the day before he turned 18, he signed up and was shipped off immediately. He then married my mother and they had 10 children.
My older brother joined and loved the Navy, he was a technical mechanic for all the jets in Sicily, he said he wanted to stay for life, but got married.

Then my joker brother was drafted in the army, I think he went in to make jokes.

They all did their duties.

I’m so proud of them, and all those who served our country and world.

My daddy, Korea, my stepdaddy, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, my step brother, Vietnam, my grampa, his brother and his brother in law, DDay, my great grampa, doughboy in the trenches WWI, my great great grandfathers, Spanish-American War, great great great grandfathers, Civil War, two on Federal side, two on Confederate side, my relative John Brown at Harpers Ferry, and all the others who served in all of the wars back to the French and Indian Wars,,,,,currently still alive, numerous uncles Vietnam, kids and nephews Iraqi Freedom, now grandbaby in Navy,,,,,I was married to USAF during the Shah’s fall,,,,my hat is off and tears are shed to my family, we gave so much, and proud to do so!

RIP my uncles, one of whom never returned to his bride and young son. He was killed by a kamikaze suicide bomber during the Battle of Okinawa. The other uncle, after flying missions over Italy, returned home to help raise his orphaned nephew with his own bride, though they were never blessed with children of their own.

All of that generation of my family now rest in the Lord. Their sacrifices bind us together as a people with a common history.

My family remembers.

May we never forget.

i offered this elsewhere, but is appropriate here:

In the earlier days of the last century Decoration Day was heard perhaps more often than Memorial Day.

“Decoration” because the graves of military personnel – and also deceased relatives and friends – would be decorated on that day.

That should explain the title of this:

American composer Charles Ives wrote a short symphonic poem called Decoration Day. well worth your 8 minutes of your time!

The classical radio program hostess this morning briefly shared that her grandfather died in battle in Italy in 1944. She honored her father and brother for their military service, but gently pointed out the reason for Memorial Day. She has had several selections in a program for Memorial Day.