Sunday Night (Memorial Day weekend)

Memorial Day Weekend

. . . . .My father, Norm Williams, my son's, Cody and Caleb, grandfather, a veteran, rests in peace at Augusta National Cemetery in Augusta, Michigan alongside many other veterans.

. . . .Who is a veteran? A veteran is a member of your family; your Dad, your Mom, your Grandfather, Grandmother, Uncle, Aunt, Brother, Sister, Son, Daughter, Nephew, Niece. Your neighbor, the man or woman down the street. The kid you coached in T-ball or watched play football.
. . . .I mean it, I don't care what your political, philosophical or ideological stance on war is; the person, man or woman, who puts on the uniform and serves, who takes those orders and puts themselves in harm's way, they need to be honored and thanked. The warrior, the person who serves in the United States Armed Forces, the veteran needs to have a special place. Not just Memorial Day, but everyday. They volunteer to put that uniform on and go. They choose that, in order to serve their country. The concept of country can get abstract at times, they serve and sacrifice for us.

. . . .Bob Woodruff, the reporter for ABC who sustained life-threatening combat injuries of his own while covering the war in Iraq, on honoring our warriors:

As we honor the brave men and women who defended our country throughout history, our thoughts will also be with our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the 35,000 here at home who have been physically injured since those conflicts began.

This Memorial Day, we should extend that honor to those who have sustained the hidden injuries of war.

Today, the wounds we see are often coupled with the ones we cannot. According to a RAND report, some 300,000 U.S. troops are suffering from major depression or post-traumatic stress; 320,000 have sustained traumatic brain injuries.

Most troops wounded in combat are surviving their injuries. They fought our country's battles. Now they fight their own.

Returning from combat to civilian life, many face intense cognitive and psychological issues, fall into substance abuse, experience depression and anxiety. A growing number are severely rent burdened, 500,000 paying more than 50% of their income on rent. Their own personal struggles reveal the larger social issues like suicide and homelessness our nation will be required to address.

We must redouble our efforts to return our heroes home to the assistance they need to reintegrate into society.
As our troops come home, we will need fresh ideas, and the broadest level of collaboration, to solve the complex issues related to the return of service members from combat to civilian life.

As we consider those who risked their lives to protect the freedoms we enjoy, we should consider this: Memorial Day shouldn't end when the last picnic is over. More than a holiday, it's an enduring symbol of the responsibility we share to ensure that "support our troops" -- including those with hidden injuries -- isn't just a slogan.

When the general orders for Memorial Day were drawn up, it was written that the people should in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.

The best memorial we could build to America's veterans is a homefront ready to support them.

. . . .A man named Sean, a programmer who work with the Google Earth Outreach team, whose goal it is to help non-profits and public benefit groups to further their cause, has deployed a personal project of his own that is awesome, respectful and worthy of a click. He has developed and deployed a project called Map the Fallen, which uses Google Earth to map the hometown and story of each and every United States Armed Forces member who has fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was a labor of love and respect for him, and deserves your attention. Click the link here.

. . . . .One of the finest pieces I've read today is from Rick Atkinson over at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10 Things About WWII You Should Know, excerpted, in part, below:

The first thing to know about World War II is that it was a big war, a war that lasted 2,174 days and claimed an average of 27,600 lives every day, or 1,150 an hour, or 19 a minute, or one death every three seconds. One, two, three, snap. One, two, three, snap.

They died for you. We've talked about the WWII Army as both an organism and a machine, an institution that grew stupendously, that demonstrated flexibility and adaptability. But we ought never forget that at the core of this story is suffering. The U.S. military sustained almost 300,000 battle deaths during the war, and about 100,000 others from accidents, disease, suicide. Many of those deaths were horrible, premature and unspeakably sad. One, two, three, snap.

War is a clinic in mass killing, yet there's a miracle of singularity; each death is as unique as a snowflake or a fingerprint. The most critical lesson for every American is to understand, viscerally, that this vast host died one by one by one; to understand in your bones that they died for you.

. . . . . .From Michael R. Auslin in the Washington Post today:

From the 1940s through the early 1970s, a generation of Americans accepted compulsory military service as a responsibility of citizenship. In war and in peace, Americans of different economic classes and ethnicities served together, forming relationships that lasted a lifetime, even when the vets had little else in common. With today's all-volunteer force, our military is more professional, but the mixing of different groups has diminished, and American society has lost the sense of the virtue of national service.

My father's older brothers and brothers-in-law all served in World War II, and the terrors they and their comrades shared bound them together for the rest of their lives. With the wars won but the peace still to be fought, their younger brothers and nephews were conscripted to serve around the globe. Nearly 1.5 million men were drafted during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, and they were the last to soldier in a time when the idea of national service was universally accepted. And "universal" was no exaggeration: The most famous draftee of the time was Elvis Presley, who mustered in at the height of his fame in 1958 and came out a tamed 25-year-old veteran two years later.

It will be hard to describe to my now 9-year-old son what it was like to grow up in America in the 1970s. That was a time not only when World War II veterans were in their prime, but also when almost everyone's father had served in peacetime, and when the older boys in the neighborhood were just returning from Vietnam. Retired military presence was everywhere. Our grade school principal, our rabbi and our local shopkeeper had all worn the uniform, which could often be found, like my father's, stuffed into a footlocker in a basement workshop. My friends and I knew that these were men far more experienced than we, and we all instinctively gave them our respect, if not always our obedience.

Back then, every family included at least one war veteran whose dark refusal to talk about combat only emboldened our young imaginations. Balancing him, however, was the Old Army Buddy (I'm sure there were Old Navy Buddies and Old Air Force Buddies, but no one ever referred to them). The Army buddy was a person of mystery, a rarely sighted being. No "real" such person lived in our neighborhood -- they came from places my brother and I had only read about, like San Diego or Phoenix or Miami. But Old Army Buddies were famous for simply showing up, sometimes unannounced, and suddenly changing everything in the house.

I can still remember when any of my father's old buddies came to visit our suburban Chicago household. My mother would bring down the dusty bottle of Japanese sake kept in the back closet, while my father set up the slide machine and unearthed the knickknacks he had brought home two decades earlier. We'd have a special dinner and stay up late listening to old tales. Once, my father and his buddy spent the entire evening recalling the dire effects of eating local vegetables that had been grown in untreated animal manure; my brother and I swore off carrots for weeks afterward. Sadly, we'd be ushered out of the room for the best stories.

Those visits were magical, because his buddies revealed another side of my father to me -- not merely his youthful experiences, but also his vitality, his hopes. My father became happily human, reliving the good old days and maybe being reminded of just how well things had turned out. This was a scene repeated in homes around the country during my childhood.

Not all the men who visited were happy. Some would show up just after divorces, others after losing jobs. One of my father's closest buddies had not only gone through a nasty separation, but one of his sons had also tragically died early in an accident. That, too, was a lesson, a way of learning that things don't always turn out right.

Their professional status undoubtedly gives our current armed forces a greater cohesion than anything the old draft could have accomplished. And yet the self-selecting nature of today's warriors is a constant reminder that most of us owe our freedoms to a select few who are willing to protect them. Unlike our fathers, we are not called to give even a small portion of our lives to the defense of our country, and I, like most of my generation, chose not to do so. It is unclear whether a large, diverse society can survive indefinitely without that sense of service to the nation and that experience in social bonding; this experiment is only a few decades old, and the results are not yet in.

Yet as much as the change to an all-volunteer Army may have deep social portents, it also means, on a more personal note, that most American children will probably never run out of their rooms with surprise and pleasure because "Uncle" Jim from Tucson has just dropped his suitcase in the front hall and tonight, no homework will get done.

. . . .Rolling Thunder this weekend in Washington D.C., close to half a million bikes are in the Capital this weekend at a rally whose purpose is to call for the government's recognition of, and protection of POW's and MIA's. They met with the President yesterday.

. . . . The Patriot Guard Riders need some recognition here too. This nationwide group of veterans rides to the funerals of soldiers, any soldier to make sure that are honored and carried out in a good way.

. . . .The Wounded Warrior Project deserves your respect and attention. This all volunteer organization and foundation works to help severely wounded veterans in their transition back to civilian life.

. . . .The Healing Waters project is another volunteer organization that works with wounded vets to help them and aid them, but taking them on fishing trips and reintroducing them to the simple, peaceful, healing process of fishing.

. . . .Outta here for now. Kiss the veteran in your life, tell the ones who've laid their earthly burden down how much you thank them, and how much you love them.
. . . .They've got your back now, and still have it somewhere out there.

Norm's son