May 30, 1868....A Day To Remember

-Memorial Day-

As I am sure you know, Memorial Day was made to remember our fallen military personnel. This day was to be for the rememberance of those who gave thier life for this country.

I think it is great to remember our dead, as no one should be forgotten, but as Gen. George S. Patton said, "It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."

Now, I of course have never been to war, but I have been reading and studying about the "art of war" for almost 10-years. I have read various accounts of combat and must say it is "not for the faint or weak of heart".

It is by far the most destructive activity we can undertake. War is history. Nothing is more talked about in history then war. It has destroyed nations and it has given birth to nations.

What I am about to share is only one man's account of what happen. There is NO doubt that this affected this young Lieutenant's life.

The below was what that young Lieutenant (I could not find his name) experenced. This is one of the saddest accounts I have ever read.

Here it is:

"I was psychologically and morally ill-prepared to lead my platoon in the great Seventh Army attack on March 15, 1945. But lead it I did....Before that day was over I was sprayed with the contents of a soldiers torso when I was lying behind him and he knelt to fire at a machine gun holding us up: he was struck in the heart, and out of the holes in the back of his field jacket flew little clouds of tissue, blood, and powdered cloth. Near him another man raised himself to fire, but the machine gun caught him in the mouth, and as he fell he looked back at me with surprise, blood and teeth dribbling out into the leaves. He was one to whom earlier on I had given the Silver Star for heroism, and he didn't want to let me down."

"After clearing a woods full of Germans clearly dug in, my platoon was raked by shells...and I was hit in the back and leg by shell fragments. They felt like red-hot knives going in, but I was interested in the few quiet moans...of my 37-year-old platoon Sergeant ...killed instantly by the same shell....My platoon was virtually wiped away. I was in disgrace, I was hurt...."

"I bore up all right while being removed from "the field" and past back through the first-aid station. But when I got to the evacuation hospital 30 miles behind the lines and was coming out from the anesthetic from my first operation, all my affections of control collapsed, and I did what I'd wanted to do for months, I cried, nosily and publicly, and for hours....I must have cried because I felt that their, out of "combat", tears were licensed. I was crying because I was ashamed and because I'd let my men be killed and because my Sergeant had been killed and because I recognized as never before that he might have been me and that statistically if in no other way he was me, and that I had been killed to. But ironically I had saved my life by almost losing it."

What you just read really happen. Think long and think hard this Memorial Day. No one deserves to be forgotten.

Until then,
Jon