On Politics 5/26/08: Memorial Day Reflections

Memorial Day, a time for reflection and prayer for those who served on our behalf, protecting this country's freedom for all. To everyone else's thoughts, I add my own for those in my family, and all veterans.

My family's service to America began with my great-great-great-great grandfather's death in the Civil War, in the cornfields at Antietam. His death certificate & papers have been passed down for generations in my mother's family, and are now proudly in my possession.

My uncle and godfather served as an unarmed Navy Corpsman in the Pacific during WW II, from Guadalcanal through to Iwo Jima. I had no inkling of this, until I asked why Uncle Nick was not accompanying the rest of the family to a fireworks show when I was a young child. My Uncle replied that he had seen enough fireworks to last a lifetime.

My father served in peacetime South Korea, my very existence being sometimes attributed to a "warm welcome home" from my mother on a return to the States. In the Army's infinite wisdom, my father, only a few months removed from converting to Catholicism to marry my mother in the church, was somehow made a chaplain's assistant (think glorified altar boy) for his tour of duty.

My father-in-law, as previously written about in this space, served our country from D-Day through the surrender of Germany in WW II. His outfit was then one of those destined for the invasion of Japan, until the atom bomb intervened. When "Saving Private Ryan" was in the theater, I took Vince and his cousin Joe, also a veteran, to see the movie. As the film ended, and the house lights went up, I looked to my left to my left to see both men, then in their 70s, crying from the power of the movie. When we exited the theater, I asked my father-in-law about how realistic the movie was. Vince's reply was that the only thing missing was "the smell, that awful smell of war".

My lovely wife's close friend has a son who is on his way to Iraq now. Owen chose to enlist after 9/11, believing his time of service had come in response to America being attacked, and is about to experience the war first-hand. His parents, imbued with a mixture of parental pride and parental fear, are joined by those who know the family in prayer for his safe return.

Senators McCain and Obama are currently at odds over competing enhanced benefits bills for war veterans. I believe this is folly; those who have risked their lives in service to our country should have no boundaries set on items such as education assistance or health care. They experienced and survived what many cannot in their darkest of nightmares comprehend. Give them a free education and lifetime health care; I suspect it would be hard to find Americans, other than politicians, who would deny our veterans this return for service.

For those that served who no longer walk among us, may you rest in peace. For those that still do, we thank you once again. For those now serving and those who will in the future, Godspeed your way back to us, alive.