(Photo credit: @USArmy)

The phrase “Happy Memorial Day” is one of my biggest pet peeves.

I hope you all have a reflective, appreciative, patriotic Memorial Day honoring the men and women who served and sacrificed for our freedom.

The Missing Man Formation always brings tears to my eyes:

***

Here’s Civil War Gen. John Logan’s Order Number 11 designating “Decoration Day,” the foundation of Memorial Day. Excerpt:

We are organized, comrades, as our regulations tell us, for the purpose among other things, “of preserving and strengthening those kind and fraternal feelings which have bound together the soldiers, sailors, and marines who united to suppress the late rebellion.” What can aid more to assure this result than cherishing tenderly the memory of our heroic dead, who made their breasts a barricade between our country and its foes? Their soldier lives were the reveille of freedom to a race in chains, and their deaths the tattoo of rebellious tyranny in arms. We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. All that the consecrated wealth and taste of the nation can add to their adornment and security is but a fitting tribute to the memory of her slain defenders. Let no wanton foot tread rudely on such hallowed grounds. Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.

If other eyes grow dull, other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain to us.

Let us, then, at the time appointed gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with the choicest flowers of spring-time; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from hishonor; let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us a sacred charge upon a nation’s gratitude, the soldier’s and sailor’s widow and orphan.

***

***
Words and men I’ll never forget:

“Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark.” – Cpl. Jeffrey B. Starr.

“He knew what he was fighting for.” – father of Lt. Michael P. Murphy.

“He felt that what we were doing was just and right.” – Charles Cummings, father of fallen hero Army PFC Branden Cummings, who died in an IED attack in Diyala, Iraq.

“I genuinely believe the United States Army is a force of good in this world.” – 2LT Mark Daily.

Remember the heroes of Camp Bastion.

***
The Sheepdogs by Russ Vaughn

Most humans truly are like sheep
Wanting nothing more than peace to keep
To graze, grow fat and raise their young,
Sweet taste of clover on the tongue.
Their lives serene upon Life’s farm,
They sense no threat nor fear no harm.
On verdant meadows, they forage free
With naught to fear, with naught to flee.
They pay their sheepdogs little heed
For there is no threat; there is no need.
To the flock, sheepdog’s are mysteries,
Roaming watchful round the peripheries.
These fang-toothed creatures bark, they roar
With the fetid reek of the carnivore,
Too like the wolf of legends told,
To be amongst our docile fold.
Who needs sheepdogs? What good are they?
They have no use, not in this day.
Lock them away, out of our sight
We have no need of their fierce might.
But sudden in their midst a beast
Has come to kill, has come to feast
The wolves attack; they give no warning
Upon that calm September morning
They slash and kill with frenzied glee
Their passive helpless enemy
Who had no clue the wolves were there
Far roaming from their Eastern lair.
Then from the carnage, from the rout,
Comes the cry, “Turn the sheepdogs out!”
Thus is our nature but too our plight
To keep our dogs on leashes tight
And live a life of illusive bliss
Hearing not the beast, his growl, his hiss.
Until he has us by the throat,
We pay no heed; we take no note.
Not until he strikes us at our core
Will we unleash the Dogs of War
Only having felt the wolf pack’s wrath
Do we loose the sheepdogs on its path.
And the wolves will learn what we’ve shown before;
We love our sheep, we Dogs of War.

Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66

Background here.

***

#WatchNow: Earlier today, more than 400 motorcyclists participating in @RunForTheWall drove onto the cemetery grounds and participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at the #TombOfTheUnknownSoldier.#MemorialDay #HonorThem

(@USArmy video courtesy of Arlington National Cemetery) pic.twitter.com/AECvaizNJv

— Arlington Cemetery (@ArlingtonNatl) May 27, 2018