The Gunner Sleeps Tonight

This isn't anything you've not read before at this time or in this space. If absence makes the heart grow fonder, I sometimes wonder what repetition causes? Still working on an answer.  

This is a rather difficult time to be an American, I think. Lots of us like to wrap ourselves in the flag, and this is an almost ideal opportunity to do that. Today is Memorial Day, another holiday we've moved to a Monday so we can have a three-day weekend with plenty of time for a barbecue, a run to the beach, and some laps at the Brickyard. 

If we work it right, we don't ever or even have to think of those with whom we grew up and with whom we went to school but who never, themselves, grew old, or whose parents and grandparents, having survived the Depression battled fascism to its knees in a worldwide war and their children and their children who have been engaged in a dozen "smallish" wars for the last half a century that all seem to cost lives.

Every town across the country has observances, as do we here in Norwich, Connecticut. The first, as is tradition, is at Taftville's Memorial Park, starting at 10, this year honoring Herman A. Duhaime, who was listed as Missing In Action on December 2, 1950, during the Korean War, and declared deceased in 1954.
And though I'm not a resident of Taftville, I'm always welcomed as you will be.

 

Later in the day, assuming the weather cooperates, there is a parade organized by the City of Norwich and the Norwich Area Veterans Council that will conclude with speeches and moments of silence at half-past two in a memorial ceremony at Chelsea Parade.

On a day usually filled with backyard barbecues and family softball games, the remembrances help us realize war is not an abstract geopolitical game played out on a grand stage by dominant personalities-it is very local, extremely personal, and heartbreakingly private. Those of our neighbors who choose military service have as many reasons for so doing as there are those who so serve. 

And while today we should mark the ultimate sacrifice of those who have served, we can also spare a thought or prayer for those who have survived as well. They bear scars, often invisible and painful, of their struggles that take a lifetime to heal.

We must never lose sight of all of those whose service makes us who we are and to whom we owe a debt more than we can ever repay. They are a call to arms for each of us to be better than we are for ourselves, our children, and our nation.
-bill kenny