Remembering those ‘who have borne the battle’
Memorial Day weekend should be a good time to be an American. Find a few moments in there to also make it a meaningful one.
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The long running joke turned meme from the movie Titanic has the elderly Rose character exclaiming “It’s been 84 years…” before recounting the fictionalized story of the famous real life sinking ship.
Donald Robert McCloud beat it by two years. The Navy Fire Controlman who died aboard the U.S.S. Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, was laid to rest along the West Fork of Twelvepole Creek in Mingo County. Four score and two, and half a world later, DNA testing finally identified McCloud, who was then laid to rest on Armed Forces Day, May 20, 2023.
With Memorial Day weekend comes many things. One of the busiest travel days of the year. Millions of workers get a three-or-more day weekend. Schools are wrapping up, graduates are graduating, and the holiday has long been the widely considered start of summer. A holiday synonymous with cookouts, travel, vacations, leisure, fun, family and the like.
It would be easy to forget what the holiday was meant to be. Armed Forces Day is for the currently serving. Veterans Day is for those who have served. Since the end of the Civil War, Memorial Day in its various forms is for those that not only served, but paid the ultimate price in doing so.
From 1775 until the present day, the number of military fatalities in major conflicts should be more than just statistics. 620,000 died in the American Civil War, where failings and hatred led to a bloodletting greater than all other conflicts before or since. World War 2 saw 405,000 Americans give their lives in the fight against the Nazis, Imperial Japan, and their supporters. The First World War took the lives of 116,000 Americans. Another 58,000 fell in Vietnam, 36,000 before that in Korea, 25,000 during the American Revolution and another 20,000 in the War of 1812. More recently, over 7,000 Americans paid the ultimate price serving our country in the post-9/11 conflicts. And thousands of others have sacrificed in hundreds of places over the last two and a half centuries.
