A poppy for my thoughts this Memorial Day

It’s way weird to me that people keep talking about honoring veterans and those currently performing military service on Memorial Day. By its very name, Memorial Day honors the dead, not the living. (Veterans Day is in November.)

On May 5, 1868, the Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (a veterans organization) issued an order that May 30 of that year be designated “for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

The “late rebellion” Logan refers to was, of course, the Civil War, and Decoration Day, as it was then known, wasn’t expanded to honor the dead in other wars until after World War I. Also around that time, the Memorial Poppy movement was begun by Moina Michael, who was inspired by these lines in the poem “We Shall Not Sleep” (aka “In Flanders’ Fields”):

"To you from failing hands we throw the Torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders Fields."

Michael’s idea to sell cloth poppies to honor the dead was adopted by the American Legion, which turned it into a moneymaking venture to help support disabled veterans. The idea was brought to the British Legion by a group of French women in 1921, and spread to Australia and New Zealand, where it became attached to ANZAC Day because poppies also grew profusely at Gallipoli.

Moina Michael had early realized that “there was not only a need to honor the memory of those who had died in the service of their country, but also a need to remember that those who were returning also had mental, physical and spiritual needs.”

On Sunday’s Face the Nation, Colin Powell echoed that sentiment when he said:

“This is a time when we reflect on the privilege we have had as citizens to have had other citizens willing to put their lives on the line. And so let’s remember all of those who served their nation. Remember their families. And remember those who were injured and are still with us.”

So to that end, I choose to remember the young man who had served in Iraq, described to me by a seatmate on an overland bus trip as now “a mad bastard. He likes to make blood shoot out of his eyes.” And the veterans I saw sleeping in the doorway of a library in Washington DC, just across the street from a posh watering spot favored by politicians and administration officials, where just the tip they leave would buy those guys a bed for a fortnight.

And the soldier who recently shot several of his comrades in Iraq, while waiting for treatment for psychological problems. And above all the 28-year-old soldier who called 911 dispatchers last Friday afternoon to tell them where to find a body and to get there quickly to clean up the mess so no kids would see.

Then, parked in his car, looking out at the Pacific Ocean in Santa Cruz, he committed suicide. According to this news report, Pfc Roy Brooks Mason Jr. was “part of [Fort] Carson's Warrior Transition Unit, to which physically and psychologically wounded soldiers are assigned as they recover or wait for reassignment.”

There are plenty who will bang the patriotic drum for the dead this Memorial Day, not the least being the companies that profit hugely from war, but who among us will hold the torch high for the living-in-hell and their families?

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

--PEACE—

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