Sunday, May 30, 1999
Pick your battlefield
BY PETER BRONSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
There's nothing quite as peaceful as a battlefield at rest.
Gettysburg stands at attention, snapping crisp flag salutes in the dazzling sunlight of heroic glory.
Antietam shakes its head in bitter disbelief at the inhuman ingenuity of man-made butchery.
Shiloh is wide-eyed with wistful sorrow, like a sleeper suddenly awakened to a nightmare that is no dream.
Each is supernaturally quiet, as if the deafening symphony of cannons, rifles, dying horses and mutilated men has forever exhausted the local supply of sound and no other noise can disturb the profound silence.
The hardest heart cannot walk such ground without being touched by the spirits of the forgotten dead. They lie beneath mildewed white headstones, or are crowded anonymously into unmarked, long-lost graves.
These are the scenes that come to mind when I think of Memorial Day — places engraved in the polished granite of our national memory. Devil's Den. The Sunken Road. The Bloody Pond where parched soldiers crawled for a dying drink from hell's well.
Memorial Day was started by Yankees in 1866. The South barely tolerated it until it was ordained a national holiday in 1971. And since then, the sharp edges have been rounded off so that the 1997 World Book Encyclopedia already sounds antiquated: “Memorial Day, also called Decoration Day, is a patriotic holiday in the United States. It is a day to honor Americans who gave their lives for their country.”
“Decoration Day”? Not anymore. “Patriotic”? The ACLU might sue. “Honor” our war dead? Not unless the ceremony involves watching the Indy 500 and scorching meat on a grill.
“In recent years,” the World Book advises, “the custom has grown in most families to decorate the graves of loved ones on Memorial Day.”
As if two days are too many for veterans, and one is enough for everyone else.
“The last two generations just don't get it,” said Pat Markley. “There's a vacant look on their faces when you talk about it. They will never understand until there is a crisis that hurts them.”
She understands. Her brother, Walter Norris, was killed near the 38th Parallel in Korea in 1951. He was 18.
She plans to attend the Memorial Day Parade in Blue Ash tomorrow, to honor the living veterans from World War II, Korea and Vietnam. “My brother didn't get to live, but the veterans who came home remember the souls lost over there,” she explained.
Her thoughts turn to a Memorial Day nearly 50 years ago, when her parents were invited to ride in the parade in a convertible. They couldn't bear it though — they had just been notified that their son was killed.
For Walter Powell of Springdale, who “chased the Japanese all over the South Pacific for three years” in World War II, thoughts turn to 292,131 white crosses. He wonders if the war dead have been betrayed.
“I have a whole row of campaign medals, but sometimes I just wonder what it was all about,” he said. “Don't newspapers know how to spell treason?”
He was talking about the Cox Committee report, which I happened to be reading when he called. Somewhere near page 60, I got a sick feeling inside. The kind you get when you know something terrible is happening and nothing will be done to stop it.
“If we don't get with it pretty soon, it's all over,” Mr. Powell said.
He was talking about a president who took cash from spies and military contractors while he let China steal nuclear secrets.
It's spelled T-R-E-A-S-O-N.
Maybe Memorial Day makes me think of Civil War battlefields because I'm lucky to have never seen one in action.
Veterans like Walter Powell have more vivid scenes to contemplate. And people like Pat Markley, who lost sons, brothers, husbands and friends to stop the Chinese in Korea, have a special claim on our nation's conscience.
“Please print more about China,” she said. “This is deadly serious.”
President Lincoln said on the battlefield at Gettysburg in 1863: “It is for us the living . . . to be 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 those 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 this earth.”
It's not too late to honor Americans who gave their lives for their country. Just pick a battlefield and defend what they died for.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or com
ments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
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