Today, my family and I went to the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell, Florida to place flags on the graves of Veterans.
I rarely admit to being a Veteran – not because I am ashamed of my service – but, because it was so inconsequential, compared to what others have done. When I think of D Day or Vietnam or the extended military actions in the Middle East, I don’t feel that I deserve to be in the same class as the people who have placed their lives in peril.
In 1979, when I was 19, I joined the National Guard in Alabama. I was deployed once – with a chainsaw – to clear trees off streets after a hurricane hit Mobile, Alabama.
I grew up just across the river from Washington, DC, during the time of Vietnam War protests. That was local news for us. A few years later, I joined the National Guard. While at Basic Training, my perspective changed GREATLY. I began to understand the meaning and importance of our military and the people who served.
Around 20 years after I left my term of service, I visited the Vietnam memorial in Washington, DC. I had avoided visiting it for years, thinking that a below ground wall was a horrible design for a memorial. But, walking past all those names, seeing the flowers and objects laid on the ground – I saw the meaning. These were sons and fathers, family members who never returned to their families. Most of them probably were not volunteers – drafted to serve in a war on the other side of the world, when most people thought it was unjust and unnecessary. Nevertheless, they answered the call of their government, and gave what President Lincoln called the “last measure of devotion” – their lives – to advance the cause of freedom.
Today, the day before Memorial Day, 2022, standing in the field of stone and American flags, I felt a small sense of what Private Ryan must have felt when returning to the cemetery at Normandy, France – looking at the gravestone of the Army Captain who died that he might live.
Today, hundreds of volunteers – young girls, Boy Scouts, school aged ROTC Cadets, other Veterans – placed 140,000 flags on the graves of Veterans. Many saluted the graves, one by one, as they placed the flags in the earth. Many said, “Thank you for your service.”
Now, nearly 40 years after my time in service, approaching the end of my life, and with two sons approaching the age where they might enter the armed forces of our Nation, showing reverence to the final resting place of men and women who served our Nation and the cause of Freedom – it was a deeply moving experience.
On the way out, I noticed a small monument. It was a bonze casting of the words of President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The closing paragraph drives the meaning home.
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.
We are now engaged in a War of a different kind. WE, today, must be dedicated to that unfinished work: that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. We must resolve that these dead have not died in vain.