Memorial Day Heroes in Pandemic Times
We certainly want to credit the brave men and women who are valiantly fighting the awful virus; many first line responders have succumbed to COVID-19, to include doctors, nurses, EMTs, police... There are many essential workers who have continued to work in order to make things run, to give us necessary power and services, to include food, water, medicine, and all those things that keep us alive.
Many older people, in our country and around the world, have died from this pernicious virus, as well as people of all ages, mostly those with morbidity factors or underlying health problems. While we are dealing with these physical threats, there are the emotional and economic threats that make life harder, more stressful, and more deadly.
We reflect and remember those cut down prematurely, to honor our fallen dead from our numerous foreign wars: from 1775 till now, we have millions to recall. Not as many as Germany or Russia or China, or perhaps a dozen other long lasting nations like Turkey or India or Iran, or even Greece... But in U.S. history we have many dead war veterans to venerate. I read that 83,000 soldiers', marines', and seamens' bodies are still to be recovered since World War II alone. Some half of those, 40 plus thousand or so, are trapped in the seas and oceans, and likely irrecoverable. On the ground, forensic researchers and scientists are still scavenging the mountains, jungles, and plains of places where soldiers and airmen and the others perished and went off the radar. More remains and remnants of our fallen are found yearly in places like North and South Korea, China, Vietnam, the mountains or deltas of Laos or other lands, still very much forgotten to the rest of us.
We remember them, thank them, and wish to offer our prayers and gratitude to their lives in the body, albeit washed away by distance and time, and their souls in the spirit.
From the 24 concentric tombs outside of Leesburg, Virginia, at the smallest federal U.S. Civil War battlefield, dedicated to the unknown fallen there, to the thousands of unmarked yet hallowed graves of our brothers and sisters from Belgium to Afghanistan, from the Coral Sea and a dozen other Pacific locales across thousands of miles of atolls and waves, to the swamps and rivers of Panama, or Georgia, we honor and hail your lives, your input to who we remain today, in the waking sunny hours of the day, and the cooler, peaceful hours of night.
Thoughts and prayers to each of you. Very much remembered. We will never stop searching for you.
---A U.S. Army Guard soldier
We reflect and remember those cut down prematurely, to honor our fallen dead from our numerous foreign wars: from 1775 till now, we have millions to recall. Not as many as Germany or Russia or China, or perhaps a dozen other long lasting nations like Turkey or India or Iran, or even Greece... But in U.S. history we have many dead war veterans to venerate. I read that 83,000 soldiers', marines', and seamens' bodies are still to be recovered since World War II alone. Some half of those, 40 plus thousand or so, are trapped in the seas and oceans, and likely irrecoverable. On the ground, forensic researchers and scientists are still scavenging the mountains, jungles, and plains of places where soldiers and airmen and the others perished and went off the radar. More remains and remnants of our fallen are found yearly in places like North and South Korea, China, Vietnam, the mountains or deltas of Laos or other lands, still very much forgotten to the rest of us.
We remember them, thank them, and wish to offer our prayers and gratitude to their lives in the body, albeit washed away by distance and time, and their souls in the spirit.
From the 24 concentric tombs outside of Leesburg, Virginia, at the smallest federal U.S. Civil War battlefield, dedicated to the unknown fallen there, to the thousands of unmarked yet hallowed graves of our brothers and sisters from Belgium to Afghanistan, from the Coral Sea and a dozen other Pacific locales across thousands of miles of atolls and waves, to the swamps and rivers of Panama, or Georgia, we honor and hail your lives, your input to who we remain today, in the waking sunny hours of the day, and the cooler, peaceful hours of night.
Thoughts and prayers to each of you. Very much remembered. We will never stop searching for you.
---A U.S. Army Guard soldier
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