It is Memorial Day. We have much to remember, and much for which to be grateful. We live in a land of unsurpassed liberties and unparalleled riches. These have come at a heavy price — a price we did not have to pay. We enjoy good lives today because of what our our soldiers and sailors, airmen and Marines were willing to endure. Montgomery Gentry sings a song about a returning Vietnam veteran who asks:
Didn’t I burn? Didn’t I bleed enough for you? I faced your fears, felt pain so you won’t have to.
Not all veterans returned. Many gave what President Lincoln once referred to as the “last full measure of devotion.” A few days ago Paul Greenberg penned these eloquent words about our honored dead:
They are beyond it all now, the dead. They are beyond all the words, even beyond the slow, mournful sound of taps. They are beyond the muck and blood, too, thank God. Beyond the pain and death, the blood and pus, the anguish spoken and unspoken, the horror and, perhaps worse, the horror anticipated. They are beyond it all now, they who went down to the sea in ships and found themselves in peril on the sea. They are beyond the acrid smoke and heart-stopping fear, the calm courage and wild rage, the sweetness of life, the sorrow and pity of its loss. They have passed all that. They have passed.
Kohima, in northeast India, was the site of an important British victory against the Japanese during World War II. Many soldiers from the British Commonwealth, including large numbers of Indian troops, gave their lives in the fighting. Now there is a cemetery at Kohima, situated on a hillside and ringed by pine trees. In the cemetery there is a monument which contains the following inscription:
When you go home tell them of us and say for your tomorrow we gave our today.
How inadequate are the words "thank you." But what else is there to say?
