They Soldiered On…Memorial Day 2023

Reading as much American History as I do, know how important Memorial day is I think of as, the Military’s Good Friday; 

   The Revolutionary War, The American Civil War, WWI, WWII, The Korean War, Vietnam…

  the thought of so much bloodshed leaves me breathless, and a patriot, without question.

  As the filmmaker Ken Burns once said, patriotism is in our blood, passed down from our brothers.

  I’ve walked battlefields.

 Wept at Arlington at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and at the Vietnam Wall. 

 But nothing moved me as much as seeing so many white crosses (9, 387) at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Normandy, France.

  It was years ago, yet the images remain.

  My dad fought during WWII coming home a changed man. I never knew why growing up, the true reason he was so melancholy and withdrawn.

   I did know how my mother tormented him, the reason I assumed he drank. But after reading books by the historians Lynne Olson and Erik Larson now realize there was much more to it than that.

  He never talked about those years he spent so faraway from home, but God only knows what he saw.

  My father died pretty young of alcoholism I now see wasn’t only because of a woman who no longer loved him.

  But for those snapshots that were indelible in his mind only whiskey could briefly quell.

  Our debt to every soldier can never be paid, so at the very least on this day, we bow our heads.

  Frank W. Carneski

My Dad.

 SB