Memorial Memory

May 29, 2000

Our minister, Don Beaudreault, stimulated this recollection. In his Memorial Day sermon yesterday, he spoke eloquently of times past, recalling his experiences of war and people in the armed forces. Neither Don nor I ever served in the armed forces, but he evoked a Memorial Day remembrance: The Memorial Day parade in Everett. (Some people called it Decoration Day.)

I was nine or ten years old – certainly no earlier than 1920. Standing on the sidewalk on School Street, near the parade’s beginning, even though I was a boy, I felt patriotic emotions.

More vivid in my memory is not the marching band, the detachment of sailors from Charlestown Navy Yard, or the auxiliary organizations, but the veterans of three wars. First, the veterans of the Civil War riding in the large open automobiles which were called “touring cars.” There were six or eight of these veterans, aged of course. Sixty years at least had elapsed since they fought at Gettysburg or Shiloh or stood guard at Appomattox when Lee surrendered to Grant. In their youth, some of them probably knew veterans of the American Revolution.

Then a larger group, veterans of the Spanish-American War, marched by, perhaps remembering a comrade who died of yellow fever or on San Juan hill.

The World War I veterans were the most numerous and vigorous, wearing their uniforms, their calves wrapped in puttees. (I’ll wager not many of you have ever seen puttees.) They wore their odd-shaped battle helmets which looked like small upside-down wash basins. These veterans were paying tribute to comrades who fell at the Argonne Forest or Belleau Wood.

I was too young to sense or appreciate the mystic bonds that these defenders of our freedom must have felt. The links are long and strong in our nation’s chain of memory. Wars are terrible disasters. I questioned the Korean War and was opposed to the Viet Nam war, but like Don, I cannot be a pure pacifist:

“Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land.”
(Sir Walter Scott)

Regardless of what could and should be criticized in our nation’s policies and actions, never should the men and women who served be demeaned or less than honored. I have experienced the emotions of pride and gratitude at Arlington National Cemetery. I have been deeply moved at the American Cemetery near Cambridge England. The soil of all continents and the deeps of every ocean are the final resting places of so many who shipped out and never returned. Yes, I am a patriot.

A few years later than the parade I described, when I was a Boy Scout, the Boy Scout Troop marched at the rear of the parade. We had no drilling in marching; and some of us were awkward adolescents, so we were a scraggly bunch. But numbered among that small troop were Carl Stein and Vincent DeLuca. By the time of World War II, I had not lived in Everett for some years, but somehow I learned that Carl Stein, an officer in the Tank Corps, had been killed in North Africa and Vinnie in France.

They were fellow scouts and good guys.

“Greater love hath no man than this,
that a man lay down
his life for his friends.”
(Gospel of John)