Memorial Day Thought
Here in the United States we are “celebrating” the Memorial Day 3-day weekend. We’re an odd people. By ‘celebrating’ we have stores and automobile dealers running ‘Memorial Day Weekend Sales’. How that celebrates what Memorial Day was first set aside for I don’t know.
Memorial Day was first set aside by the widows of Confederate soldiers to tend to the graves of their husbands and sons fallen in that awful conflict. It was soon picked up by those on the Union side. In time it became an officially recognized national holiday where the living remembered the dead, whether fallen in combat or just those who had passed on.
The thought made me think of a recent motion picture, “Saving Private Ryan”.
In the motion picture a squad of American soldiers during World War II is tasked with finding and taking out of combat the sole surviving member of four brothers. Eventually they do find him, but are sidetracked by the unpredictability of the course of battle into having to defend a small key town from an enemy advance. They’re soldiers first and rescuers second.
The movie faithfully recreates the hell and randomness of death in combat both on the receiving end and delivering end. It’s that randomness of death that is most disturbing. If you were not an ardent pacifist when you began watching the movie and experienced the, by the opinion of actual veterans, faithful recreation of the Invasion of Normandy, you certainly will feel that way as the cinematic moments tick by.
Hey I like to think of myself as a tough guy on the inside. I’ve seen things and have enough life experience to be able to vicariously experience what was up on the screen. But I’ll tell you that I was squirming in my seat with fear and terror and a desire to have the story end.
No, I am not saying that I disliked the story, but the fear and horror and sudden unpredictability of what might happen to the characters I had grown to like, well it got to me. “Please don’t die, please don’t die, please don’t die” I kept on silently thinking as I watched. And at the back of my mind I also kept asking myself, is holding this nameless French town really worth it? Is it worth these movie characters’ lives that who I had grown to like?
It was a question that the members of the squad were bouncing back and forth between themselves throughout the course of the story. “Why are we here anyway? Why are we fighting? Why’s saving this Ryan guy so important?”
{Movie Spoiler Coming Up]
In the end, sadly, Tom Hank’s character, our reasonable likeable character who has a average life run-of-the-mill life to go back to at home, does die in the defense of the town, and Private Ryan. I wondered to myself, ‘was his death really worth it’?’ I felt a lump forming in my throat as I wrestled with the question. But tough guys don’t cry.
The closing scene, decades later after the war, shows a military cemetery where row after row of markers seems to stretch out forever in all directions under a warm and quiet summer sky. An elder man and his loving family has entered the cemetery and is slowly, as dictated by the elderly gentleman’s pace, making their way along the tree shaded walkway. The family is very solicitous of “Dad”, perhaps he shouldn’t have come, does he need assistance, and worried looks exchanged between them as Dad resolutely shuffles on.
“Do you want us to come with you?” one member asks when he finally finds the row he has been looking for. He shakes his white head. He will do this on his own alone.
He kneels before one of the almost anonymous markers and the camera swings around to shows us the name on it. It is Tom Hanks’ character. The captain of the squad who fought and died to save Private Ryan.
The elderly gentleman, only now recognized as the elderly Private Ryan, softly speaks to the captain as tears run down his wrinkled cheeks. He has tried to live a good life. He’s married and raised his children well, respectful and decent.
And in one or two lines that even now choke me up with emotion, he asks the captain that if by doing so, ‘Have I made it all worth while? Have I made your sacrifice worth while?’
Today, more than a century after the Battle of Gettysberg, a few lines of President Lincoln’s address, spoken at the dedication of the military cemetery there for the battle’s fallen, came to mind.
‘It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated ... to the unfinished work which they who fought ... have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be ... dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we ... highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain....’
In the end it is only we, the inheritors of the peace that was bought at such cost, who can make their sacrifices worthwhile by what we do with that peace.
Memorial Day was first set aside by the widows of Confederate soldiers to tend to the graves of their husbands and sons fallen in that awful conflict. It was soon picked up by those on the Union side. In time it became an officially recognized national holiday where the living remembered the dead, whether fallen in combat or just those who had passed on.
The thought made me think of a recent motion picture, “Saving Private Ryan”.
In the motion picture a squad of American soldiers during World War II is tasked with finding and taking out of combat the sole surviving member of four brothers. Eventually they do find him, but are sidetracked by the unpredictability of the course of battle into having to defend a small key town from an enemy advance. They’re soldiers first and rescuers second.
The movie faithfully recreates the hell and randomness of death in combat both on the receiving end and delivering end. It’s that randomness of death that is most disturbing. If you were not an ardent pacifist when you began watching the movie and experienced the, by the opinion of actual veterans, faithful recreation of the Invasion of Normandy, you certainly will feel that way as the cinematic moments tick by.
Hey I like to think of myself as a tough guy on the inside. I’ve seen things and have enough life experience to be able to vicariously experience what was up on the screen. But I’ll tell you that I was squirming in my seat with fear and terror and a desire to have the story end.
No, I am not saying that I disliked the story, but the fear and horror and sudden unpredictability of what might happen to the characters I had grown to like, well it got to me. “Please don’t die, please don’t die, please don’t die” I kept on silently thinking as I watched. And at the back of my mind I also kept asking myself, is holding this nameless French town really worth it? Is it worth these movie characters’ lives that who I had grown to like?
It was a question that the members of the squad were bouncing back and forth between themselves throughout the course of the story. “Why are we here anyway? Why are we fighting? Why’s saving this Ryan guy so important?”
{Movie Spoiler Coming Up]
In the end, sadly, Tom Hank’s character, our reasonable likeable character who has a average life run-of-the-mill life to go back to at home, does die in the defense of the town, and Private Ryan. I wondered to myself, ‘was his death really worth it’?’ I felt a lump forming in my throat as I wrestled with the question. But tough guys don’t cry.
The closing scene, decades later after the war, shows a military cemetery where row after row of markers seems to stretch out forever in all directions under a warm and quiet summer sky. An elder man and his loving family has entered the cemetery and is slowly, as dictated by the elderly gentleman’s pace, making their way along the tree shaded walkway. The family is very solicitous of “Dad”, perhaps he shouldn’t have come, does he need assistance, and worried looks exchanged between them as Dad resolutely shuffles on.
“Do you want us to come with you?” one member asks when he finally finds the row he has been looking for. He shakes his white head. He will do this on his own alone.
He kneels before one of the almost anonymous markers and the camera swings around to shows us the name on it. It is Tom Hanks’ character. The captain of the squad who fought and died to save Private Ryan.
The elderly gentleman, only now recognized as the elderly Private Ryan, softly speaks to the captain as tears run down his wrinkled cheeks. He has tried to live a good life. He’s married and raised his children well, respectful and decent.
And in one or two lines that even now choke me up with emotion, he asks the captain that if by doing so, ‘Have I made it all worth while? Have I made your sacrifice worth while?’
Today, more than a century after the Battle of Gettysberg, a few lines of President Lincoln’s address, spoken at the dedication of the military cemetery there for the battle’s fallen, came to mind.
‘It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated ... to the unfinished work which they who fought ... have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be ... dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we ... highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain....’
In the end it is only we, the inheritors of the peace that was bought at such cost, who can make their sacrifices worthwhile by what we do with that peace.