A wonderful reader of ND Nice – and a retired master chief petty officer of the Navy – has become my pen pal. He sent a Memorial Day Reflection this morning, and has given me permission to share it with all of you (with a wish to remain anonymous). He ended his email with a message for us all: “May you, your family, and your readers have a quiet and memorable Memorial Day.”

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MEMORIAL DAY REFLECTION

To day we honor and celebrate those who have served our nation with honor and those who gave their last full measure of devotion.

We remember Lexington Green, Concord, Bunker Hill, Princeton, Saratoga and Yorktown.

We remember General Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans.

We remember Colonel William Travis, Jim Bowie and Davey Crockett at the Alamo.

We remember the heroes of the Civil War, General Hancock, General Meade, Colonel Chamberlain and Lee and Longstreet, too.

We remember LTC Theodore Roosevelt at San Juan Hill.

We remember the heroes of The Great War, General “Blackjack” Pershing, Sergeant Dan Daly and Sergeant Alvin York.

We remember the heroes of World War II, Admirals King, Fletcher, Sprauge, Halsey and Mitscher and Generals Patton, Eisenhower, MaCauliffe and Vandegrift and the everyday Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine and Coastguardsman who won the war.

We remember the leaders of the Korean War including “Chesty” Puller and the Marines of the Chosin Reservoir.

We remember General Westmoreland in Viet Nam and the Soldiers and Marines who never lost a battle. Not One.

We remember General Schwartzkoff of the First Gulf War.

We remember the men and women who proudly served as Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airman and Coastguardsman in Gulf War Two, Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It is the Soldier, not the poet who has given us freedom of speech.  It is the Soldier not the campus organizer who has given us the right to demonstrate.  It is the Soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag and whose coffin is draped by the flag who allows the protester to burn the flag.” – Father Dennis O’Brien

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.  The decayed and degraded state of a moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.  A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight-nothing he cares about more than his own safety-is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” – John Stuart Mills

“Dear Madam, I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement from the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how week and fruitless must be any word of mine which would attempt to beguile you from a grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you with the cherished memory of the loved and lost and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.” – Letter from President Lincoln to Mrs. Lydia Bixby of Boston, November 21 st , 1864