Today is Memorial Day and some people will be working, some will wonder if the liquor store is open while others will grab that last long weekend day before it’s back-to-work.
No matter what they have in store, here’s hoping a good share of the day will find every American thinking about the service and sacrifice of those who died for the United States of America.
Wars get debated, analyzed, written about and forgotten. But Memorial Day is the opportunity to contemplate the toll taken by war and ponder how that toll translates into lives lost.
No one thinks about those losses with more sorrow than the loved of war’s casualties, including the men and women who will visit graves today and participate in Memorial Day ceremonies. War’s toll is shared by the loved ones of the lost and by comrades in arms. Their memories are not dampened or made hazy by time.
Lynn native Don Boyce still remembers the deaths on a Pacific island of two tent mates he had lived with for a year.
“Seeing friends killed still affects me,” Boyce said.
There is the memory of another soldier who volunteered amidst the German surge into Belgium in 1944 to rush to the front and fight in the snow. His commanding officer rejected the request, telling the soldier he was lucky to be serving in a rear-echelon unit and should be grateful he wasn’t fighting and dying in the Ardennes Forest.
There is the memory of the Russian combat engineer who refused to wear a helmet even while enduring German shellfire. She explained how her only connection to human normalcy during war involved carefully styling her hair even if her vanity put her at risk of death.
If there is a gift or benefit that comes from Memorial Day, then it is the opportunity for veterans and their loved ones to share their memories, horrifying as well as poignant, with younger generations.
Every high schooler in America should step briefly into Don Boyce’s shoes and experience what it felt like to be an 18-year-old amidst war.
Boyce’s brother, Earl, also served in World War II and he made this sad and sobering observation about the lack of interest and understanding among young people of the ultimate sacrifice made by so many Americans who fought and died: “We’re lacking a little patriotism today.”
Let’s all display some patriotism today. We owe it to Don and Earl Boyce and their comrades.
