SUMMARY: Memorial Day began after the Civil War as a commemoration of those who had fallen in America’s greatest struggle for social justice. Though we have engrafted additional layers of meaning onto Memorial Day, that original subtext is still very much at the heart of our commemoration of those who have died in this country’s service. If we are to do right by those who have laid the costliest of sacrifice on the altar of freedom, we must ensure that the arc of America’s moral universe continues to bend toward justice and toward a more perfect and inclusive Union, and those who have borne the burden of battle are not treated as a disposable commodity (and left to take their own lives at a frightening rate) by a society that has become as habituated to endless war as the residents of some of our inner cities have become habituated to gang violence.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Of all the various holidays that festoon our American calendar, two specifically force us to confront the reality of war and sacrifice. Veterans Day (or Armistice Day as it is still called in some quarters) should rightly turn our minds toward those who have fought in our wars, facing foreign shot, foreign shell, and foreign steel on our behalf. Veterans Day is a time to think about the moral and social debt we owe to those who have gone to war and returned.
By contrast, Memorial Day is a time to commemorate those who have fallen in this country’s service. It is time to give thanks for their service, but also a time to think carefully and critically about larger questions of war, peace, and the limbo in which societies often find themselves between the two, as we have found ourselves since the end of World War II.
On Memorial Day, I find myself ineluctably drawn back to words spoken more than half a century ago at West Point by Douglas MacArthur as he accepted the Sylvanus Thayer award. Addressing the Corps of Cadets, MacArthur spoke of hearing in his dreams “the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.”
For most of us now living, America has been at war or involved in military operations for more years than she has been at peace. The soundtrack of the greater part of our lives has been “that strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.”
Now Memorial Day began among African-American freedmen in Charleston, South Carolina as Decoration Day, a commemoration of the Union’s Civil War dead. Though the passage of nearly a century and a half has led to considerable accretions of symbolism and meaning onto Memorial Day, it began, and remains still, a commemoration of the greatest struggle for social justice in American history.
For if the Civil War began as merely a fight to preserve the Union, it ineluctably evolved into a far larger moral confrontation as Americans realized that the Union could not be saved except by overthrowing once and for all the Peculiar Institution of chattel slavery. If the Union were to be saved, it could have no more truck with the proposition that it is ever permissible for one human being to own another.
Since then, the arc of our moral universe, however long, has bent, however slowly, toward justice. Starting with the abolition of slavery itself, America has engaged, over and over again, in a series of often agonizing internal struggles over who and who is not a part of our American body politic.
It has taken more than a century to rid ourselves of the grosser inequities and iniquities of the Peculiar Institution. Even now, with an African-American president in the White House, racial insecurities continue to bedevil our political discourse.
It has taken more than a century to accept the basic proposition that women ought to be entitled to all of the badges and incidents of first-class citizenship. Women’s suffrage means little if women can legitimately discriminated against in hiring and compensation or be denied access to basic reproductive autonomy or contraception.
We are still involved today in a great struggle over whether America’s queerfolk should even be allowed to exist, let alone enjoy first-class citizenship as out people in the Commonwealth.
Yet, the arc continues to bend toward justice; it continues to bend toward a more perfect Union and a more inclusive Commonwealth, even if some in our society find themselves apoplectic at such a prospect. But a society that cannot find room for people of color, for women, for the queer, and for all who are in some way Other, is a society that has yet to do right by those whose final resting places are to be found in our national cemeteries, who in this country’s service laid down what Abraham Lincoln so movingly called “so costly a sacrifice on the altar of freedom.” We must make it right, especially for those whose sacrifice winds up being long deferred, whose fatal forfeit comes up for payment long after the battle is over.
Still, making it right has to involve more than trite, anodyne, talismanic invocations of “thank you for your service.” Every time I hear such an expression, I think I want to scream. “Thank you for your service” is emotional kitsch; it sounds like something we might say to a doorman or a skycap, while proffering some sort of miniscule gratuity. “Thank you for your service” reflects a dangerous societal view of our service members as being in some way a disposable commodity. Perhaps the sheer length of our military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has deadened us to the reality of war. We have forgotten General Sherman’s warning that “war is hell... its glory is all moonshine.”
Indeed, our tendency to treat those who have borne the battle as disposable commodities in a grimly reductionist economic analysis may be at least partly responsible for the epidemic of suicides among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. A 2010 study by the Department of Veterans Affairs, released last year, indicated that veterans were taking their own lives at the staggering rate of 22 a day. Such a number ought to shock us. For these are the casualties of the invisible wounds of war, the emotional wounds that kill slowly. If we were to consider death by suicide as combat related, the number of Iraq and Afghanistan war dead would easily double. Yet what can we say to the returning veteran who comes home feeling an anguish so deep no tears will come, a pain so overwhelming that there are no words to describe it?
Doing right by those who have borne the battle must involve more than trite forms of words. If Dostoyevsky was right to observe that we can judge a society by entering its prisons, we may equally judge a society by the extent of its compassion toward those who fight its wars. By that measure, we are still falling short. We have become inured to the idea of a constant state of military hostilities, and we have built around our civilian souls a Chinese wall by which we may hope to insulate ourselves from those equally ongoing realities of war, injury, and death.
Yet the more strongly we build that Chinese wall, the more we harden ourselves and wall ourselves off from the capacity for compassion and empathy. Sadly, many of us appear to have become as hardened and indifferent to the sufferings of our servicemembers as residents of high crime inner-city neighborhoods become habituated to gang violence. Our wars are bereaving us of some important part of our humanity, if only we knew exactly of what we were being bereft.
On this Memorial Day, as we recall the sacrifice of those who fell for us, we should remember two things. First, let us remember that America is always at her greatest when she seeks purposefully after justice. Second, let us remember that from the earliest days of our history, those who have died for America have been of every sort and condition of human being.
Male and female they have died for us.
Old and young they have died for us.
Straight and queer they have died for us.
From every creed and confession they have died for us.
From every tongue and nation they have died for us.
From every race and region they have died for us.
And in the equality of their resting place, we have only one word for them: American.
Requiescant omnes in pace, et lux aeternam luceat super omnes. Amen.
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California, where he served for two terms as a member of the city council. The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any entity or organization with which he is associated. They are not intended to constitute, and should not be construed as, legal advice, though effective Monday, white shoes may be worn without risk of committing a fashion felony. This post is an adapted republication of one published at Memorial Day, 2012.
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