ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

It’s a shame that the Memorial Day holiday has lost so much of its meaning to many Americans. Graves of veterans go unattended and unadorned in many towns and cities. The day has become little more than a marker for the beginning of summer, or of a long weekend filled with barbeque’s, blockbuster movie openings, and baseball games.

There are some exceptions:

Since the late 50’s on the Thursday before Memorial Day, the 1,200 soldiers of the 3d U.S. Infantry place small American flags at each of the more than 260,000 gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They then patrol 24 hours a day during the weekend to ensure that each flag remains standing.

In 1951, the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts of St. Louis began placing flags on the 150,000 graves at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery as an annual Good Turn, a practice that continues to this day.

More recently, beginning in 1998, on the Saturday before the observed day for Memorial Day, the Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts place a candle at each of approximately 15,300 grave sites of soldiers buried at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park on Marye’s Heights (the Luminaria Program).

And in 2004, Washington D.C. held its first Memorial Day parade in over 60 years.

In an editorial today, the Washington Post has an excellent suggestion:

And while we’re at it on this formerly somber holiday, we’d like to offer a few words in support of a related movement that seems to be spreading spontaneously, with a little encouragement from people who have access to the public ear. It is the simple practice of saying “thank you” to men and women in armed forces uniform—on the streets, in office buildings, malls and other places.

Granted, this doesn’t come easily to a people who often are too self-conscious even to sing the national anthem at ballgames. This is especially true in our own city, where formality and restraint are more pronounced than in most. But in fact it’s here that gestures would have a special meaning to a lot of people—from service members assigned to the Washington area to traveling soldiers and Marines in airports to the young man in a wheelchair seeing his nation’s capital on a day trip out of Walter Reed. Such acts affirm that no matter what one’s view of the country’s current conflicts, there is a common and widespread appreciation of those who carry the burden of war. They deserve one more word from a city that produces millions of them every day, one that isn’t all that hard to offer: “Thanks.”

Thanks indeed. It’s the very least we can do. And in an op-ed piece in the same paper, John Wheeler has another great idea:

Unfortunately, no Memorial Day ceremony or war memorial that I have seen has explicitly honored the wounded. In fact, under House Concurrent Resolution 587 of Feb. 10, 1966, Memorial Day is simply for paying “tribute to those who gave their lives.”

This oversight needs correction. We need to honor the wounded as well as those who died. Their numbers are growing, and society needs to both acknowledge their sacrifice and understand their situation. And it needs, through this tribute, to give support and encouragement to the families of the wounded—families that bear great anguish, time devoted to care and economic loss.

Wheeler points out that because of improved body armour and medical advances, the wounded to dead ratio for the war in Iraq is at 8 to 1, better than the 5 to 1 during the Viet Nam war. Many of these veterans come back scarred in both mind and body – a living testament to the horrors of war and why we should never commit our men to battle unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Here are some links to where you can donate time or money to help wounded vets:

United Spinal Association
Purple Heart.Org
Military Family Network
Disabled American Veterans

And Operation Hearthfire supports wounded vets and has a couple of dozen links to other organizations.