Brothers (and Sisters) In Arms

It's perhaps ironic that we spent the first nine or so weeks of this spring sheltering in place or face-masking and gloving up while we scurried and hurried to semi-surreptitiously accomplish what often felt like illicit errands and now here we are readying for the unofficial traditional start of summer, Memorial Day weekend, this coming Monday as starting today Connecticut slowly loosens some of the safeguards and restrictions necessitated to combat the spread of COVID-19.

When I was a kid growing up (in the dark days of black and white TV and NO Internet) we called the upcoming holiday "Decoration Day" because so many families spent some part of the day traveling to or at a cemetery honoring the grave of a fallen member of the Armed Forces (World War II, Korea, and the ongoing Vietnam War touched practically every family). 

We've gotten so used to having professional armed forces in this country we forget that until 1973, we had military conscription, usually called the draft. Even during the War for Independence, we had people who would volunteer, but conscription was how we gathered the manpower to build the armies that fought our wars. 

And the draft was only for men-there were women in some jobs in the Armed Forces (WAFs and WAVEs are the two I remember learning about and I'm sorry for forgetting the others), but certainly not in all jobs and they joined of their own volition.

We called everyone serving in the military back then 'our boys in uniform.' After the draft was eliminated in 1973 and both sexes were serving, maybe because we thought it sounded silly to say 'our girls in uniform', we instead started to say 'our women in uniform' and once we did that it made sense to also say 'our men in uniform.' Odd how we made men out of boys, eh?

This weekend weather permitting will be big backyard barbecue days, always socially distanced of course with a lot of us hoping to 'make up for lost time' while curmudgeons like me fret that we've become oblivious to the 'real' meaning of Memorial Day. So here's what we learned in school: a lot of very brave people sacrificed their lives for this nation so we could cook baby-back ribs or check out the deals on the car lots over this weekend.

Except, quite frankly, it wasn't just the very brave; there were a lot more very frightened, perhaps flawed and ultimately very fragile men and women who died in uniform so we could complain about the lack of live sports right now, or how come we couldn't buy as many burgers and dogs as we wanted.

But because we have a couple of days until we get to the holiday weekend, I'd like to suggest you find a computer to check out the US Department of Defense website, and then type in "Memorial Day" in the search bar. It doesn't take very long, though, for those in uniform whose lives have ended, it will always be too short. Start at the top and read as many articles as it takes until that sense of entitlement starts to fade. It's time well-spent. 

The website's not nearly as poetic as the lines penned by a John McCrae, but it doesn't pretend to be. We are, after all, living in the greatest country on earth defended by professional warriors who, if we work our media consumption just right, we hardly ever have to think about although this weekend would be a perfect moment to so do.

-bill kenny