Tomorrow is Memorial Day. Many Balloon Juice readers have served or have known and/or been related to those who have. And, unfortunately, some Balloon Juice readers know those who never made it back from the wars they’ve served in. In honor of those who served, here are two videos of Soldiers of the Old Guard (the 3rd Infantry Regiment – the Oldest US Army Infantry Regiment) providing two different types of 21 Gun Salutes: a brief explanation and demonstration of Final Honors and a 21 Gun Salute by the Presidential Salute Battery from Memorial Day 2013. The final video is of Staff Sergeant (SSG) Drew Fremder of the The United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own” Buglers playing taps at Arlington National Cemetery.
And finally the words of President Lincoln:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here 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 here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Villago Delenda Est
This is an important holiday, a time for remembrance, but there’s too much feeding into the cult of militarism that infects this country. Local news was about 10 minutes of various gatherings and memorials tonight. Then you’ve got politicians like Rafael Cruz tweeting about it when you know that they’d sell vets down the river in a heartbeat to profiteering privatizers taking over the VA, for example.
greennotGreen
How can Southern dead-enders read Lincoln’s words and not realize that the Confederacy was an error? What the founders of these United States established in the late 18th and very early 19th was and is worth preserving, preferably not with blood, but with civic engagement.
I write this as a Southerner born and bred, having lived in the South 58 of my 65 years.
Schlemazel Khan
@Villago Delenda Est:
Every year I wish we would remember the fallen & commit to producing fewer of them in the future.
Emma
I
It is worth fighting for. It is still worth fighting for. And we’re in the middle of a major engagement at the moment. It’s a battle of the ballot, but nonetheless important. Essential. If we lose it will take a hundred years to put things right, if we even can.
Mr Stagger Lee
If I had to do it all over again I would have chosen Armor or be a Cannon-cocker (Field Artillery). I was in Air Defense Artillery(You Fly You Die) heading to Tahoma National Cemetery for their Memorial Day ceremony.
divF
The photos make me think of my father’s funeral and interment at Arlington, a little over six years ago. His tombstone lists service in three wars (WW II, Korea, Vietnam).
Mr Stagger Lee
@Villago Delenda Est: And yet vets will VOTE for these Col Sanders, who wants to skin and filet them.
Johnny Coelacanth
Open thread, eh? Let’s tune in to C-Span and see what’s going on at the Libertarian National Convention… https://twitter.com/BoingBoing/status/737110118802829312
Mike in NC
@Villago Delenda Est: Our national Cult of Militarism since 9/11 has been largely promoted by chickenhawks like Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Mitt Romney, and other scum who had “other priorities” than to serve in the military.
Gvg
Flirting with succession talk was one major reason I thought Palin was unfit to be VP and that Texas governor goodhair talking up a threat of succession while in office was just beyond the pale to me. He didn’t get much traction but both times it didn’t get the media attention and disdain I thought it deserved. People seem to have gone numb and don’t see what is important among all the fake outrage.
Johnny Coelacanth
@efgoldman: But did you click that link and see that which could not be unseen?
ThresherK (GPad)
@efgoldman: Shouldn’t Libertarian security kick the C-SPAN cameras out of the hall?
NPR is fluffing the Gary Johnson ticket enough this weekend that :-/SPAIN (Sic, autocorrect!) is redundant.
Chris
Spent the day at Gettysburg. Pretty much the most appropriate place I can think of to go on a Memorial Day.
I’d been there before a few times long ago, but somehow I’d never heard of, or visited the site of, the cavalry engagement that happened a few miles east of the main battlefield, where a Confederate attack by J. E. B. Stuart was intercepted by Union forces under the command of one George Armstrong Custer. The only thing I ever knew about Custer was that he got himself and a bunch of his men killed recklessly in a war where I’m not terribly inclined to cheer for his side in the first place. I guess that opinion might’ve been a little harsh.
Also, this exchange with the guy showing us the map at the visitor’s center;
Him: “This is where Pickett’s Virginians took off from, this is where the North Carolinians took off from…”
Dad: “North Carolinians? So it wasn’t just Pickett?”
Him: “Oh no, no. The North Carolinians actually took even more casualties in that charge. Just because Virginians are very good at talking themselves up and taking all the credit for… You’re not Virginians, are you?”
Us: “NO.”
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: Send me a PM and I’ll send you the best battlefield guide.
ThresherK (GPad)
@Gvg: Anyone asking the LT Gov of TX if he’s gonna secede when Hillary wins?
It’s never too early to get those assholes on the record
J R in WV
Well said, Adam. Absent Friends, indeed!
In memoriam…
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: An equally doomed, but perhaps more spectacular assault was made on the second day of battle by Barksdale’s brigade of Mississippi infantry, also under LTG Longstreet’s command. Barksdale led the entire charge, which was turned back at Plum Run, from horseback with his hat off.
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: Yes indeed.
Mike in NC
@Chris: The most spectacular National Battlefield Park we’ve been to is Antietam, because the park rangers did an amazing job of explaining the events surrounding the battle. Highly recommended if visiting the Harper’s Ferry area. We were there 20 years ago on our honeymoon at the Bavarian Inn in WV.
JanieM
Thanks for this, Adam.
In what I hope is the spirit of the post, I want to remember my grandfather, who died in 1926 at the age of thirty-five, probably in part from the after-effects of being gassed in WWI. Also my dad, who served on the USS Proteus in the Pacific in WWII; an uncle who also served in the Pacific and was awarded the Silver Star; and another uncle who died in Korea. I never knew my grandfather (he died when my mother was two) or the uncle who fought in Korea (he died when I was two).
The explanation in the first video reminds me of some song lyrics:
It’s heartbreaking and despair-inducing to think that armies can stop in the middle of a battle to gather the wounded and bury the dead, only to start all over again. Why can’t they just…stop? Or not even start.
Adam L Silverman
@JanieM: Very familiar with that song. Most appropriate for ANZAC Day, which is April 25th.
https://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/anzac/anzac-tradition/
Chris
@efgoldman:
To be fair to the guy, I’m not actually sure if he was a revanchist or even a Southerner, might’ve just been a compulsive history nerd trying to set a record straight. (His notion that no other state’s contribution to the war is remembered as much as Virginia’s doesn’t seem wrong to me, though I’ve never really thought about it before).
Also, as I pointed out to dad right after that conversation – there wasn’t much “credit” attached to the survivors of Pickett’s charge. Pickett and his entire family’s name was mud in the South for generations afterwards, with him being blamed for losing the battle and therefore the entire war by just not trying hard enough. Can’t be attaching any blame to Saint Lee, peace be upon his Lost Cause name, even if the whole thing was his idea in the first place, now can we.
A Ghost To Most
I’d like to remember my father-in-law, who as a B-24 pilot was wounded over Ploesti, and his brother, who died on Normandy beach.
Loviatar
The saddest part of Memorial Day for me is remembering the dates on the headstones, the vast majority showing an age of 25 years or younger. The next time you’re at a college or professional sporting event look at the participants and realize that in a war that is age cohort who will most likely fight and die.
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
Yeah, the way it was explained to us, the third day was actually supposed to involve attacks on multiple fronts that would completely overrun the Union lines, Pickett’s Charge being the only one we remember. Obviously, none of them worked out.
Also, a mundane observation about another part of the battlefield: I’ve been to Little Round Top several times before, and looking at the rocky terrain on the way down, the thing that always comes to my mind is “I wonder how many casualties when they charged down the hill came from guys just spraining or breaking an ankle trying to run with one eye on where their feet landed and another on the Rebs in front of them?” The kind of thing that’s too dumb to ever be put into a movie, but that you can just totally see happening…
Chris
@efgoldman:
Aren’t you glad to know it’s not just our side that has to contend with this kind of looniness, though?
Steeplejack
@Adam L Silverman:
Why not just post a link so that other interested readers could benefit as well? Or, if no link is available, reveal where the guide can be obtained.
ThresherK (GPad)
@JanieM: I did not listen this weekend, but the song is a common number to show up on A Prarie Home Companion Memorial Day shows.
Even during the compulsory flag-waving media days of the Iraq invasion.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: Its amazing they were able to make the pivot and sweep going down that terrain. The last several times I’ve been to Gettysburg, and I was going at least two to three times a year between 2010 and 2014, someone always made sure there as a small American Flag at the corner of Lew Armistead’s monument. Not an Army of Northern Virginia battle flag or naval jack, but an American Flag.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@divF: My grandpa is there too (WWII, Italy, artillery (I think)). His funeral service was interesting. The riflemen doing the “3 volleys” at the end of the ceremony pointed them at all of us. It caused a bit of concern for a moment! ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Lizzy L
I’d like to remember and honor my father, who fought in the South Pacific in WWII, came home, went back to work as an accountant, lived a decent life, loved his wife and kids, and died two months short of his 80th birthday.
He told no stories, and almost never spoke of the war. But he did teach his oldest child — his daughter, me — the words & music of “The Caissons Go Rolling Along,” “The Marine Corps Hymn,” “Anchors Aweigh,” and “The Air Force Song.” I can still sing them.
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
Speaking of commemorating the dead, a random question: any idea why the monument to a group of New Yorker dead (somewhere along Cemetary Ridge) has an American Indian and his tipi on it? Didn’t see any explanation provided or any sign that the group had been made up of native volunteers, so I assumed it might be some sort of mascot.
Adam L Silverman
@Steeplejack: I will link to these done by my former colleagues:
http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Battle-Gettysburg-Revised-Expanded/dp/0700618546/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1464579929&sr=8-3&keywords=Leonard+Fullenkamp
http://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Gettysburg-Experiencing-Battlefield/dp/0807835250/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=5179KtEvrRL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR106%2C160_&refRID=12N0JG04MY2S0B5Z3AE2
They are probably the two best popularly available guides to the Battlefield at Gettysburg.
StringOnASick
I picked up this month’s Smithsonian magazine to find an article about the horrific WWI fighting high in the Dolomites, and realized the photos were of a place we visited thanks to a British guidebook for climbing via Ferrara routes. The signs at the site were in 3 languages, none in English and long and complicated text, but it was obvious that incredible numbers of troops died along the mountain front; the place had an otherworldly feel of a high alpine killing field. The article said that avalanches from heavy snows in Dec, 1916 killed 10,000 on both sides in just 2 days, and the losses to snipers were worse. We were able go through the tunnel the Italians drilled in their attempt to blow up the Austrians dug in on top. How they didn’t all die from the cold amazes me, and the suffering of that time and place is terrible to contemplate. The article called it the least known battlefield of WWI.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: This one?
http://gettysburg.stonesentinels.com/union-monuments/new-york/new-york-state/
That’s not a Native American, its supposed to be a depiction of the State of New York as a human being.
Here’s a link to the Union Monuments and an explanation for each:
http://gettysburg.stonesentinels.com/union-monuments/
And the Confederate ones:
http://gettysburg.stonesentinels.com/confederate-monuments/
I’m partial to the Iron Brigade monuments, because the Brigade Combat Team I was assigned to as cultural advisor is the modern Iron Brigade.
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
No, not that one. It was smaller, I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be an Indian and his tipi, and it said on the back that it had been offered by the “Tammany Society” (oh dear) in honor of I-forget-which unit of New Yorkers.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: Now I’m tracking. 42nd NY Infantry. That’s the Delaware Chief Tammany who gave his name to Tammany Hall and the Tammany Society.
http://gettysburg.stonesentinels.com/union-monuments/new-york/new-york-infantry/42nd-new-york/
ThresherK (GPad)
@efgoldman: Counting the hours til burning That Flag becomes a felony in NC.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Chris: Via one of Adam’s links, 42nd New York “Tammany Regiment”.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: 2 minutes late.
(sigh).
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: its the thought that counts!
Mike in NC
@StringOnASick: Excellent book on the Italian/Austro-Hungarian WW1 campaigns in the mountains is “The White War” by Mark Thompson.
justawriter
The Latin is “It is sweet and right to die for you country” This was written by a man in the trenches in WWI.
DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Wilfred Owen
Villago Delenda Est
@srv: That is a sentiment with which I can agree with enthusiasm.
seaboogie
@srv: Wow.
Feathers
Thanks for the links above. Remembering the full honors funeral of my grandfather at Arlington Cemetery, with the band, caisson, guns, and riderless horse. He graduated from high school, didn’t want to go into the mines and had no interest in farming, so he signed up for the army without telling his family first. He entered as a buck private and retired a full colonel. Just missed general. Broke his heart. He was in the finance corps and my grandmother always attributed his career success to his amiable Irish humor and his excellent golf game. These men also do serve.
And also his youngest daughter, my aunt and godmother, who followed him around the world, and went into hospice this past week. Fuck cancer.
PurpleGirl
@srv: Every so often you find and post something that is hugely affecting and very on point to the posting. Thank you.
PurpleGirl
If you are ever driving upstate on the Taconic State Parkway, look out for the Clarence Fahnestock Memorial State Park. A friend of mine is related the Fahnestock family. A cousin was a member of the Lost Battalion of WW1. However, at the time that the Battalion went out on that last mission, he (I believe, Clarence) was actually in hospital in Paris for shell shock. He could never forgive himself for still being alive and he was deeply depressed. One day he went camping at the back end of the family estate and killed himself. His father was so upset by that suicide, and he blamed it on the forest. He then decided to give the land (some 14,000 acres) to the State for a park.
Origuy
My grandfather, who died when I was very young, was in the 15th Balloon Company of the Signal Corp of the American Expeditionary Force in WWI. There is a book which talks about the Balloon Companies; my sister has his copy. They got to France late in the war because of the training required; some of the companies didn’t complete training before the armistice.
Origuy
@PurpleGirl: Out of idle curiosity, I looked up Clarence Fahnestock Memorial State Park. Wikipedia has a different story about its origin.
I don’t know whether the official story is sanitized or whether your friend got family history garbled.
billcoop4
The Green Fields of France
Chet
My cousin was an Army Engineer in Iraq, then went to law school and became a JAG lawyer. Three years ago he was hiking on Fire Island in Alaska when the tide came in unexpectedly quickly. It was too cold to swim and he drowned.
Though he did not not die in combat, he died while in service, and he was given a posthumous commendation and full honors. My pacifist, peace corps alumni aunt and uncle were extremely impressed and grateful.
As the Memorial Day tradition of preaching on Facebook about how to celebrate Memorial Day grows, I think it’s also fitting and proper to pray for an end to war.
Uncle Cosmo
@StringOnASick: A form of horror peculiar to that theatre of war was the effect of artillery & mortar in the rocky terrain. Any shell that struck the mountainsides blew out a cloud of hard stone shrapnel that cut through troops like scythes. After a lot of bloodshed both sides were compelled to roof their trenches.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
The mists form ranks in Fourney’s Field….
Thanks for the Gettysburg guide reccs, Adam. We’ll probably be up there again in a few years.
Gotta hit Chickamauga first, though. We’ve been told that my husband’s great-grandfather’s homestead is part of the park. I forsee lots of tramping in obscure corners trying to match up 19th century deed descriptions with the modern ground.
StringOnASick
@Uncle Cosmo: the Smithsonian article mentioned that; being a former geologist, one of the things that struck me about the place was the abundance of plates of scree and how rotten the rock was for safe climbing; now I know a lot of that lose rock was from explosions. The article told how the Italian alpini – mountain troops – climbed the steep unstable faces with hemp ropes and no climbing gear, just untying the ropes from their waists, threading them through pitons, then tying them back to themselves. They’d often get part way up a steep face, then be shredded by snipers, or mortars were used to bring rockfall down to sweep them off the rock to their deaths. I found climbing the via Ferrara routes gut clenching because the rock was so friable that I didn’t trust the fixed protection bolts and pitons, and no one was shooting at us at the time. I can’t imagine how horrible this fighting was.
Miss Bianca
@Lizzy L: Very late to the thread, just wanted to say your dad sounds like my dad. He was a professor, not an accountant, and he died at 73. Served in the South Pacific theater on the USS Andrew Jackson. Would have been career military like his father, I believe – who during WWII was a Colonel in the Marines, the Barracks Commander at Pearl Harbor – but for a cataract in his right eye. I always thought it peculiar that that defect was apparently not a disqualifier during the actual war, but became one after the fact. But I suppose I should be grateful for it – since if he had stayed in the military, I doubt I would have made it onto this world’s stage – not in my present form, anyway.
My eldest brother, who also died recently, was also in the Navy during Vietnam. I’m not sure he even ever made it over – suffice it to say, he should *not* have been in the military. I think my father thought it would help “straighten him out” – he was a bit of a wild child. But all it did was mess him up further. Some people take root and flower in that sort of discipline, some wither and some part of them dies. That was my brother’s experience.
Memorial Day used to be called “Decoration Day”, and the whole idea was to decorate veterans’ graves. I feel a little mournful knowing that my father’s grave is in Maine, my brother’s in New Hampshire, and my grandfather’s in San Diego, and I so far away from all. All I can do is remember them today.
PurpleGirl
@Origuy: That official story is sanitized; the Fahnstock’s did have a streak of mental health issues. My friend’s brother killed himself during college, in the 1960s. The family counted a number of career military members and a couple of diplomats in its ranks.
Adam L Silverman
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I’m coming up on a permanent change of station in a bit. It looks like I’ll be back in reasonable driving distance to Gettysburg – 30 to 90 minutes give or take. So ping me before you go if you wanted a guided tour by someone who’s been along one, but never ran one, four of the USAWC guided tours we do for the students. I’ve done several of these for folks on my own time.
Bob In Portland
fuckwit
Huh, for years I’ve wondered where the “under god” thing in the pledge of allegiance came from.
Now I know: the anti-communist wingnuts of the 1950s cribbed it from Lincoln, and inserted it into the pledge.