Lest we forget.

mdbythecar mdhuggy grammsdad

Memorial Day.  We set aside this particular day to honor the people who died while serving in this country’s armed forces.  The United States of America.

A lot of men and women have served in the U.S. Military since this county’s inception.  And a lot of men and  women have died doing so.

Those deaths are called casualties of war.

I absolutely hate that term.   I don’t know how it ever translated into such a thing.  A casualty.  There is nothing, absolutely nothing, casual about it.  In fact, it is aimless, deplorable, and regrettable.

I am very thankful to all the men and women who have served this country in the ranks of the military.  To both, those who gave their lives in the line of service, and those who survived.

I am grateful to be afforded the freedoms which I currently have, because of these sacrifices.

But.  War is absolute hell.  Completely, and viciously devastating.

My Dad served in World War II.  He was 23 years old when he started fighting in that horrendous war.  It is the war with the most casualties of any, in U.S. History.  Over a million were killed or injured.

He served with a great sense of duty.  But, I don’t get the notion that he wanted to remember much of anything about it.  He talked very little of it.  When asked, he would recount some of the milder stories.

He was so young.  But there were many, many younger than he.

I guess it saddens me, a great deal, that we have wars.  And that young people die as a result.  I wish there were another way.

I think there is another way.  I  just wish we could find it.

 

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. — Sun Tzu

 

Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind. — John F. Kennedy

 

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. — Dwight D. Eisenhower