Miscellany #5: Memorial Day

"America the Beautiful," David Hammons (1968)

1. From "An Address Delivered by General John Coburn on Memorial Day, May 30, 1905"

Almost half a million able-bodied men, fit to bear arms, perished in this way. Their hallowed dust, scattered upon distant battle-fields, or where ships foundered in the silent waters, or gathered in National cemeteries; the people would crown this day, with flowers, and praises and blessings. 

Their toils and sufferings have not been in vain. The cause they espoused was successful; the die has been cast; the great American Nation is one, and is foremost on earth. Did man ever die for a nobler purpose? What gratitude can ever repay the cost of such a sacrifice?  

[...] 

Sergeant Brow, of the 85th Indiana, with his life current streaming away, said, "Oh, Colonel, save me for my wife, but it is all right if I go." Colonel Gilbert of the 19th Michigan, mortally wounded at Resacca, said to me, "Farewell, I am going; write to my wife that I did my duty and died for my country." Sergeant Anderson Winterowd, of the 33d Indiana, on the field of Peachtree Creek, falling and dying, sad: "Boys, the rebels have got me, but it is all right." 

What is all right? Is such a death; such agony, all right? Oh, no. But the result will be all right. Victory will come and peace will come, and both will come to stay. And somebody will live to hail the mighty day, and ten thousand glad hearts, all over the land, will rejoice in the happy beams of that splendid dawn, and call down blessing on the memories of those who freely shed their blood that it might be.

2. From "Memorial Day 1936," by the Middlebury Peace Council

Eight million five hundred thousand men of all nations were killed in the last war. Tomorrow America will commemorate their sacrifice; not only to America but to all nations. At the same time the question will arise; Have they died in vain?

The answer lies in us: the students, workers, professionals and veterans united in a common front against the war-markers, prejudice, yellow journalism and political leaders who will not lead. Memorial Day is an opportunity to express that the unity of thought in action by showing the peoples of the world, who also morn [sic] their dead, that their dead and our own have not and will not be betrayed. 

Memorial Day 1936 has thus a deeper signifigance [sic] than heretofore. The issues are plain: a demonstration of solidarity on our part with the soldier dead who fought our fight. It is this solidarity alone which can ever check the war-mongers and reactionaries who vote ever larger war budgets in the midst of starvation; who instigate loyalty oaths and military training. 

3. From Catch-22, by Joseph Heller

Not even the chaplain could bring Doc Daneeka back to life under the circumstances. Alarm changed to resignation, and more and more Doc Daneeka acquired the look of an ailing rodent. The sacks under his eyes turned hollow and black, and he padded through the shadows fruitlessly like a ubiquitous spook. Even Captain Flume recoiled when Doc Daneeka sought him out in the woods for help. Heartlessly, Gus and Wes turned him away from their medical tent without even a thermometer for comfort, and then, only then, did he realize that, to all intents and purposes, he really was dead, and that he had better do something damned fast if he ever hoped to save himself. 

There was nowhere else to turn but to his wife, and he scribbled an impassioned letter begging her to bring his plight to the attention of the War Department and urging her to communicate at once with his group commander, Colonel Cathcart, for assurances that—no matter what else she might have heard—it was indeed he, her husband, Doc Daneeka, who was pleading with her, and not a corpse or some impostor. Mrs. Daneeka was stunned by the depth of emotion in the almost illegible appeal. She was torn with compunction and tempted to comply, but the very next letter she opened that day was from that same Colonel Cathcart, her husband’s group commander, and began: Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. and Mrs. Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father or brother was killed, wounded or reported missing in action. 

Mrs. Daneeka moved with her children to Lansing, Michigan, and left no forwarding address.

4. "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner," by Randall Jarrell

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.