Remembrance
Never to forget.

JJ Sefton, thankfully recuperating from his recent medical travails, says it well:
This is memorial day, and more than ever we cannot forget those who laid down their lives for our country and way of life. May their ultimate sacrifice never be in vain and may what they died for yet be reborn in our lifetime. For those of you who lost friends and loved ones in combat, I mourn right along with you.
Amen, brother.
Update! In a txt-msg exchange with Doc Samizdat earlier today, he wished me a Happy Memorial Day, then mused on whether that’s an appropriate greeting for an occasion which is supposed to be focused on somber, serious-minded remembrance of our military personnel who lost their lives while serving their country. My response:
Well, I prefer to think that those dead soldiers wouldn’t mind us being happy as we remember their sacrifice, it does them no dishonor. Just so’s we DO remember.
Many of us complain every year about the mindless frivolity with which we approach Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and 4th of July—actually, regarding the 4th, I myself have been saying for years now that, rather than a celebration, it ought to be a national day of mourning in Amerika v2.0, celebrated only by the minions of the Shadow State for having finally declared their own “independence” from the Constitution, our Founding principles, and We Duh Peepul generally. But never mind that right now.
So yeah, seeing as how those men fought, bled, and died on far-flung battlefields to protect our unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, I think we can probably leave the killjoy finger-wagging to the Progtards. The thorny question of whether that really was what they were fighting for—more precisely, whether the FUSA government either represents those ideals or is actively hostile to them—is a discussion for another day.
A most moving update! My brother from another mother Big Country tells the story of Flight Sergeant Bruce E. Greenhalgh, a young American volunteer flying in first Wellingtons, later the legendary Avro Lancaster heavy bomber, as a RCAF machine-gunner. FLT-SGT Greenhalgh gave the last full measure of devotion when his aircraft was shot down during one of Air Marshall Arthur “Bomber” Harris’s ill-advised, dreadfully costly “area-bombing” raids on Cologne in OCT 1944, at the too-tender age of 19, bless his brave heart. As BCE closes:
Fl/Sgt. Bruce Edward Greenhalgh
19 Years, 2 Months, and 17 Days Old…
Far too Young.
A Tragedy.
Lost Dreams.
Lost Futures.
Remember those who will never grow old.
Honor them, and their memory.
They deserve nothing less.
Indubitably so. For myself, I can think of no better way to wind up today’s Memorial Day observance than Lincoln’s timeless words.
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 battle-field 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 can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not 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.
Well said indeed, sir. Beautifully said, in fact. And since Memorial Day originally started after the Civil War as a tribute to Union dead called Decoration Day—we Southrons established our own separate day of remembrance for our fallen boys, stubbornly snubbing the DamnYankee Memorial Day until after WW1—the Gettysburg Address suits the occasion quite well, seems to me.


















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