Memorial Day

May 26, 2025

I won’t flatter myself to believe that I have something new or compelling to write about Memorial Day. I don’t. Still, now that I’m older, I do think more about all the life and all the future adventures given up by the kids who died fighting for the preservation of recognizable civilization.

A couple of years ago, I was in France and visited graveyards of American soldiers who were killed there, now more than eighty years ago. The cemeteries are tended by local families. They are meticulously kept. There was no litter anywhere, and they were tended down to the last blade of grass. It felt more like love than merely respect or gratitude.

My most lasting impression was how young so many of them were. Many had been in high school three or four years before they died. Some had been there the spring before. I guess I had known that earlier, but seeing it on the headstones left me feeling shaken.

Almost all of them were white men. We hear a lot in this day and time about how white men are little but the conscienceless heirs of racism, sexism, and one sort of unearned superiority or another. There will be time enough to get into that; I’d prefer not to today. I would just ask the people who think that way to look at the pictures, including the film at the Facebook link, and let some charity, and some doubt, enter their minds.