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Tribute to our Nation’s Fallen Heroes
Remarks by Delegate David Poisson
Memorial Day 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
Sterling Veterans Memorial
Sterling, Virginia
American Legion Commander Kuo, VFW Commander Atkinson, American Legion Vice-Commander Dixon, members of American Legion Post 150, Supervisor Delgaudio, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and most importantly, to our very special guests of honor today, our veterans, welcome, and thank you for being here this morning.
I am honored to participate in this ceremony to pay tribute to our Nation’s fallen heroes and to commemorate the sacrifices they made so that we might live in a more peaceful world.
Like many holidays celebrated in our country, Memorial Day has lost its connection with the events in our history it was intended to commemorate. Today, instead of treating it as a day of remembrance for our fallen men and women in uniform, we basically think of Memorial Day as the unofficial start of summer. In communities across the region, this weekend is marked by the opening of the neighborhood pool, the season’s first barbeque, or its first road trip. The constant stream of media hype about Americans headed for beaches, mountains and destination resorts and everything we have to buy before we get there – obscures the real meaning of the holiday.
This day has nothing whatever to do with driving or shopping. It is about remembering the men and women who died while in military service.
It is important for us to remember the reason for this holiday. We are at war and each day it continues, we lose some of our country’s finest young men and women. No one has had to live with the consequences of this war more than the families of those who have fallen on battlefields far from home, with names most of us cannot even pronounce. Unlike most of the wars in which this country has been involved in the past, this one is being fought entirely with volunteers.
There has been no draft since 1973. Less than one-half of one percent of our people will serve in uniform at any one time. In World War II, it was over 12 percent. In the draft era, with many more Americans entering the service, a large pool of veterans was created. Veterans understand the demands military service imposes, the pangs caused by being separated from loved ones, the dangers of combat. With far fewer veterans today to remind us, it is easy to lose sight of all that military service requires of our men and women in uniform – and to forget too quickly those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. It seems at times that foreign countries – especially those that have been liberated by American forces – hold our fallen troops in higher regard than we do.
I remember some 20 years ago now, standing in a church in rural France. There was nothing exceptional about it. I would not have given it a second thought; until I happened to notice that in a dimly-lit corner of the church, there was a small American flag and a plaque. I walked over and read the simple but powerful words in French and English, “In gratitude to the United States of America and in remembrance of her 56,681 sons that now and forever sleep in French soil.” An elderly woman, sitting in a pew nearby, saw me reading the inscription and asked if I was an American. I said that I was. She slowly rose, nodded at the memorial and said, “You are always welcome in France.”
Over the years, more than a million Americans have died serving our country. Each, as you know, is given a military funeral. Military funerals signify respect for the fallen and their families. If you’ve attended a military funeral, I’m sure you’ll agree, it’s not something you ever forget – the flag on the coffin, the honor guard in full-dress uniform, the crack of the rifles firing three volleys as Taps are played on the bugle, the snap of the flag as it is folded into the familiar triangle of blue, the reverence shown by the fallen’s fellow warriors. Before making his final salute, the officer in charge presents that folded flag to the family – more often than not, to a young widow. He makes that presentation “on behalf of a grateful nation.” How should we in this community – and in our daily lives – demonstrate our thanks for the sacrifices these men and women have made?
Edgar Guest, a prolific American poet of the first half of the last century, in his poem, “Memorial Day,” in words more elegant and inspiring than any I could ever come up with, said:
The finest tribute we can pay
Unto our hero dead today,
Is not a rose wreath, white and red,
In memory of the blood they shed;
It is to stand beside each mound,
Each couch of consecrated ground,
And pledge ourselves as warriors true
Unto the work they died to do.
Into God’s valleys where they lie
At rest, beneath the open sky,
Triumphant now o’er every foe,
As living tributes let us go.
No wreath of rose or immortelles
Or spoken word or tolling bells
Will do today, unless we give
Our pledge that liberty shall live.
Our hearts must be the roses red
We place above our hero dead;
Today beside their graves we must
Renew allegiance to their trust;
Must bare our heads and humbly say
We hold the Flag as dear as they,
And stand, as once they stood, to die
To keep the Stars and Stripes on high.
The finest tribute we can pay
Unto our hero dead today
Is not of speech or roses red,
But living, throbbing hearts instead,
That shall renew the pledge they sealed
With death upon the battlefield:
That freedom’s flag shall bear no stain
And free men wear no tyrant’s chain.
And so today, let us honor their memory by fighting for human rights – and rejecting the false choice some would have us make between freedom and security, as if in this great Nation there could ever possibly be any greater security than the freedoms we enjoy.
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