Memorial Day, Thank you

[CharlieJ]

Let us take a moment to honor those who gave us the chance to DO what we do, on large boats or small, on this Memorial Day.

All gave some, some gave all. And poppies grow in Flanders fields.

[CapnK]

Hear, hear.

[CaptMac]

God bless the Veterens,

Thank you for keeping us FREE & SAFE

[AdriftAtSea]

Amen to that...   ;D

[CapnK]

Same here. :)

Heading out to a family get-together. My uncle Walt, ex-career Navy (UDT/SEAL, 6x Vietnam vet, & who knows what else!) is in town from Cali, so it will be good to be able to Thank him in person, while sharing what must be a bittersweet day for him.

[CharlieJ]

Lest we forget what it's about

If tomorrow all the things were gone,
I'd worked for all my life.
And I had to start again,
with just my children and my wife.

I'd thank my lucky stars,
to be livin here today.
'Cause the flag still stands for freedom,
and they can't take that away.

And I'm proud to be an American,
where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend here still today.
'Cause there ain 't no doubt I love this land,
God Bless the USA.

From the lakes of Minnesota,
to the hills of Tennessee.
Across the plains of Texas,
From sea to shining sea.

From Detroit down to Houston,
and New York to L. A.
Well there's pride in every American heart,
and its time we stand and say.

That I'm proud to be an American,
where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up,
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land,
God Bless the USA.

And I'm proud to be and American,
where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.

[jotruk]

I raise a grog to you Charlie J

[Jim_ME]

Memorial Day is somewhat International for me. Although my father's father is buried in a South Portland cemetery, his grave would have a Canadian flag in his service marker.

My father told me about how England and Canada got into WWI much earlier than the US did. His father explained to him that once he was old enough, and especially since he could see that the US would be getting into the war eventually, he decided that he would rather serve in the forces of his country of birth.
"You're an American. I was born in Nova Scotia and I'll always be a Canadian."

He took a train from Portland to St. John New Brunswick and enlisted. He was seventeen and lied about his age to get in, saying he was eighteen. You had to be older to be accepted into infantry, so he became a Medic in the Canadian Ambulance Corps. He only had $2 in his pocket and expected that he would go right in, but was told it would be the next day, so he slept on the street that night.

He was sent to Flanders Fields, where in between charges and artillery barrages he would leave the trenches with another man bearing a stretcher through the barbed wire and mud out into "No Man's Land" to treat and pick up the wounded, the dying and the dead, and bring them back to the trenches, to the ambulance trucks, and eventually to the field hospitals.

Years ago I came upon a poignant song, written by an Australian, that always makes me think of him.


No Man's Land
(by Eric Bogle)

Well, how'd you do, Private William McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
I'll rest here awhile in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day, Lord, and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916--
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean,
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

[Chorus:]

Did they beat the drum slowly,
Did they sound the fife lowly,
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sing "The Last Post" in chorus?
Did the pipes play "The Flowers of the Forest?"

Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you always 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

The sun's shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard it's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

And I can't help but wonder, now Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you 'The Cause?'
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxkhBvO8_kM

[rorik]

Written about the 1798 Irish Rebellion but I think the words are true for every conflict.
One of my favorite songs.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley


I sat within a valley green
I sat me with my true love
My sad heart strove to choose between
The old love and the new love
The old for her, the new that made
Me think on Ireland dearly
While soft the wind blew down the glen
And shook the golden barley
Twas hard the woeful words to frame
To break the ties that bound us
But harder still to bear the weight
Of foreign chains around us
And so I said, "The mountain glen
I'll seek at morning early
And join the brave United Men
While soft winds shake the barley"
While sad I kissed away her tears
My fond arms 'round her flinging
The foeman's shot burst on our ears
From out the wildwood ringing
A bullet pierced my true love's side
In life's young spring so early
And on my breast in blood she died
While soft winds shook the barley
I bore her to some mountain stream
And many's the summer blossom
I placed with branches soft and green
About her gore-stained bosom
I wept and kissed her clay-cold corpse
Then rushed o'er vale and valley
My vengeance on the foe to wreak
While soft winds shook the barley
But blood for blood without remorse
I've taken at Oulart Hollow
And laid my true love's clay-cold corpse
Where I full soon may follow
As 'round her grave I wander drear
Noon, night and morning early
With breaking heart when e'er I hear
The wind that shakes the barley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD2y_thDWHY

[Captain Smollett]

Thanks all...grog all around.

[s/v Faith]

For all the others who will not post to this thread, for whom this is a very hard day...

...thank you, and know you are NOT alone.

[Frank]

Jim_ME....John McCrea was a Canadian medic that also served in Flanders Fields. Your grand father may well have served with him and knew him well. The poem he wrote is still read here every memorial day.

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow
      Between the crosses, row on row,
   That mark our place; and in the sky
   The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
   Loved and were loved, and now we lie
         In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
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  "

[Grime]

Thanks Charlie.

[Jim_ME]

Thank you Frank--John, and Charlie, and all.

I never met my grandfather. It was one of the great joys of my father's life that while his father was in the hospital dying, my older sister was born and my parents were able to take her to him and let him hold her in his arms. He helped name her, Mary, after his sister who had died in the flu pandemic of 1918 while he was away. I would be born on my sister's first birthday. Irish twins, as they say.

My grandfather has been to me that man in the photo in the frame (in Bogle's song), the name on a stone among the family graves and the different flag--at first the one with Union Jack, and then the red maple leaf. Part of Memorial Day for me was hearing about my father's memories of his father. Our closest family veteran to remember just happened to have served in the Canadian Service.

Here on the East Coast, many of the old graves and some of the old buildings and historic sites are from the Colonial Period. British colonies, and some French.

My grandfather was never the same after his service, and his life was shortened as a result--and he was among the fortunate ones. During WW1 Canadian troops had a casualty (killed and wounded) rate of 37%.

I think about his volunteering to go early, full of idealism and loyalty, and wonder sometimes whether he would have done the same thing if he'd known what it would be like.

My father was about 10 when Fascism began to rise in Europe. A couple days ago, on Memorial Day. He talked about how WWII in Europe was to a large extent a continuation of WWI. That the reparations on Germany were so harsh that rather than creating reconciliation, it led to the kind of poverty and desperation that enabled someone like Hitler to come to power and to look for scapegoats and territorial ambitions.

During the late 30s, the shipyard in South Portland, Maine had been building Liberty Ships to send supplies to England, and many were being sunk as fast ash they could build them.

My father grew up during the Great Depression. There were no TVs in those days so he and his father would listen to the news on the radio, hear the voices of FDR and Winston Churchill, read about it in the newspaper, and watch the newsreels before the feature films at the local movie theater. Admission was 25 cents.

That is how, just after he had turned 14, he heard the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor and followed the war across the Pacific. Portland's protected harbor became a major Navy port and the city was full of sailors. In those days it had street cars and cobblestoned streets, as you still see in San Francisco.

When my father and many of his friends grew old enough, they left high school and enlisted in the service. He joined the US Navy in 1945. By then the war in Europe was ending, but it looked as though the war with Japan would go on for some considerable time longer. As the war got closer to their homeland, Japan fought ever more fiercely. Almost everyone in his basic training class was assigned to train for landing craft duty as it looked like there would be a Normandy type invasion of Japan to win and end the war.

In Canada it is Remembrance Day in November (the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month) when the war dead are remembered. I believe that it used to be Armistice Day, as it was here and later became Veteran's Day. Here in Maine and Massachusetts we also have Patriots Day.

I understand that our Memorial Day grew out of the tradition of placing flowers on the graves of the soldiers of the Civil War. Many towns both North and South have a memorial monument to the fallen from the Civil War, especially tragic since the casualties on both sides were American.

In the living room here is a desk that belonged to my father's mother's grandfather, a Civil War veteran. His bayonets are still in one its drawers.

We are on the border with Canada and there are many families that span both sides. I've sailed some of the waters and would sail across the bay and the invisible line, anchor, and grill some fish, steam some clams, drink some ale, and watch the sunset over the Easternmost parts of the US. On those bays many families are scattered around and form communities as if there was no boundary at all.  

Anyway, this is my personal experience of Memorial Day here in Maine. I meant only to add this to and complement what Charlie has written in starting this thread.

I am fortunate that my father has already lived a generation longer than my grandfather. Not only have many of his grandchildren grown up with and gotten to know him well, but now a great grand daughter and another one on the way. My father always enjoys going out sailing, and I am painfully aware that I have wasted the recent seasons. Tried to move up to a larger boat at the same time that the economy shrunk. One ignores the Keep-it-Simple (and affordable) and Do-it-Now rules at one's own peril.

Someday the stars and stripes will wave next to the maple leaf there in the family plot. I hope that it is many years away. We've got more sailing to do. It's already past Memorial Day and the short season is going by...

[Captain Smollett]

Thanks for sharing that, Jim.

The root of memorial is memory, to remember. What a great thread; what great memories.

It shakes lose some cobwebs from my own family tree.

Though a step aside from those who fought, it is but a slight step. On Valentine's Day this year, my children and I brought a gift basket to a widow from our church. She was born in Germany and her father literally packed his family with what they could carry and they fled in the middle of the night. I was very thankful that my children could sit and listen to her story, first hand (and still, all these years later in a German accent)...the tale of that 'escape.'

There is so much to remember, and I fear a lot is being forgotten.

Thanks again, Jim, Charlie and all....

[Jim_ME]

My Father's Day post seems to fit best in this thread...

Frank, My father had heard of the poem by John McCrae that you mentioned [posted]. He said that it is in a small book of poems that belonged to his father.

I read the Wikipedia article on McCrae "...Though various legends have developed as to the inspiration for the poem, the most commonly held belief is that McCrae wrote In Flanders Fields on May 3, 1915, the day after presiding over the funeral and burial of his friend...who had been killed during the Second Battle of Ypres. The poem was written as he sat upon the back of a medical field ambulance near an advance dressing post at Essex Farm, just north of Ypres. The poppy, which was a central feature of the poem, grew in great numbers in the spoiled earth of the battlefields and cemeteries of Flanders. McCrae later discarded the poem, but it was saved by a fellow officer..."

"...On January 28, 1918...[doctor] McCrae died of pneumonia [a common effect from the gas warfare]...He was buried the following day in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission section of Wimereux [France] Cemetery..."

I searched the Canadian Military Archives online and found an image of the original document my grandfather had filled out and saw where he signed his oath when he enlisted in Saint John. It showed his birthday day and month true, but the year "1898" was a year early. He had listed his sister, Mary, as his next-of-kin on the form. My father told me that he had sent much of his earnings to her in Nova Scotia. He said that his father had told him that he always thought they knew he was too young, but since he could only be a medic, they let him get away with it.

I found and looked through some photo archives and found one especially of interest. When we got together for Father's Day, I showed it to my Dad and he said
"That does look like your grandfather. (the third man from the left) I think that may be him. You can see their gas masks in the packs on their chest. The Canadian Troops were among the first ones to have gas used against them."

His great grand daughter had been born the day before, just in time for Father's Day.

[Frank]

thanks for sharing