Memorial Day

[Lisa B]

While celebrating this weekend, please take a moment on Monday, at 3pm local time, to remember our fallen heros.

The National Moment of Remembrance, established by Congress, asks Americans wherever they are at 3 p.m., local time, on Memorial Day to pause in an act of national unity (duration: one minute).The time 3 p.m. was chosen because it is the time when most Americans are enjoying their freedoms on the national holiday. The Moment does not replace traditional Memorial Day events; rather it is an act of national unity in which all Americans, alone or with family and friends, honor those who died for our freedom. It will help to reclaim Memorial Day as the sacred and noble holiday it was meant to be. In this shared remembrance, we connect as Americans.

As we remember our fallen heroes, our hearts go out to those who can never forget - the families they left behind. People whose wounds are still fresh 20, 40, and 50 years later. For those of us who have not lived it, it is hard to imagine what it must be like: seeing—with shock and puzzlement and dread—a uniformed officer and a chaplain approach the front door, hearing them express the deep sorrow and gratitude of the United States, saying "We regret to inform you…"

Do not think in terms of a thousand casualties; think in terms of one. Because each casualty was someone's loved one.



Have a safe and happy holiday. Please remember those who made it all possible....

[habs71]

Even though this poem was written during WWI I think of it and recite it every Memorial Day.

Skip


"In Flanders Fields

By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.



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McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915. Here is the story of the making of that poem:
Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the South African War, it was impossible to get used to the suffering, the screams, and the blood here, and Major John McCrae had seen and heard enough in his dressing station to last him a lifetime.

As a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae, who had joined the McGill faculty in 1900 after graduating from the University of Toronto, had spent seventeen days treating injured men -- Canadians, British, Indians, French, and Germans -- in the Ypres salient.

It had been an ordeal that he had hardly thought possible. McCrae later wrote of it:

"I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days... Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done."

One death particularly affected McCrae. A young friend and former student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May 1915. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside McCrae's dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.

The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station beside the Canal de l'Yser, just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. The major was no stranger to writing, having authored several medical texts besides dabbling in poetry.

In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook.

A young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant-major stood there quietly. "His face was very tired but calm as we wrote," Allinson recalled. "He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer's grave."

When McCrae finished five minutes later, he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the young NCO. Allinson was moved by what he read:

"The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene."

In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. The Spectator, in London, rejected it, but Punch published it on 8 December 1915. "

From the Arlington National Cemetery Site

In Flanders Field, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

[animallover4ever]

**MODS IF NOT APPROPRIATE PLEASE FEEL FREE TO REMOVE:

dear soldier,


You gave up your Freedom, and life to protect mine.
You Left your family and friends to protect mine.
You gave up your beliefs to protect mine.
You put aside your feelings,thoughts and fears to protect mine.
I have only 2 words for you THANK YOU, SOLDIER, THANK YOU

FOR GIVING UP WHAT YOU CHERISH TO PROTECT MINE, MAY GOD AND PROTECT YOU AND WATCH OVER YOU IN YOUR TIME OF NEED.

SEMPER FI SOLDIER, SEMPER FI!!!


today i ask that from here on out, you go out and Thank a Soldier, Vet, or service men/women for what they have done, will do, or continue to do, please put aside your differences and do this, for all they do, is that is the least we can do for them.