Today, I find myself thinking about the young men of my grandfather’s generation — boys, really — boarding ships bound for North Africa, or the blood-soaked beaches of the Pacific. I'll bet they were terrified, most of them, though you wouldn’t have known it to look at their faces in most of the photographs. They stood tall, cracked jokes, smoked cigarettes with shaking hands. Scared out of their minds, perhaps, and trying like hell not to show it.
Before the war was through, they’d be asked to summon a kind of courage most of us will never have to imagine. They would crawl through hellscapes of mud and fire, would witness things too awful to tell their mothers when the letters home came — if they came at all.
Some would be among the first to step into Nazi concentration camps - places where the full horror of human cruelty was paid bare. They saw the emaciated survivors, the piles of bones and discarded shoes, the silence of a place where so much suffering occurred it will likely never be forgotten. After seeing that, they weren't just there under the auspices of fighting for a symbol or a flag, they knew that they helped pull the world back from the edge of total darkness.
Many of them died there, far from the quiet neighborhoods and corner diners and baseball fields they called home. They died soldier’s deaths — in trenches and beaches and fields with no names — casualties of a cause bigger than themselves, a cause they chose to believe in.
But don’t let the sepia photographs and stone memorials fool you — these were not marble men. They were dreamers. They were kids with plans. They were thinking about holding their sweetheart’s hand in the soft flicker of the movie house, about the sound of the bat cracking at the ballpark on a summer night, about sitting down at a worn kitchen table with their folks, laughing over a pot roast and mashed potatoes.
They dreamed of coming home. They dreamed of this, Today. They probably dreamed it would be a little more peaceful at home, but that's besides the point.
Look around today. Look at the families stretched out in the grass at the park, at the smell of charcoal and burgers on the grill, at the kids laughing, sun-drenched and barefoot. Look at this little slice of American peace, and take a moment. Take a deep breath. And remember them.
And while we remember them, let us also remember this: True heroism is quiet. It doesn’t need a slogan. It doesn’t strut or shout. It is sober, and often lonely, and rarely comes with fanfare. In an age where some in power are more interested in projecting strength than practicing humility, more invested in the performance of masculinity than the preservation of decency, we must resist the temptation to let our fallen be reduced to a prop The memory of the dead is not a tool to be wielded for political gain, nor a mantle to be draped over any party or politician.
In a time of polarizing conflict and vitriolic discourse, let us remember that America’s obligation to the Fallen does not end at the moment of death — No, what begins at enlistment, continues beyond death. To truly honor them is to see them as whole people, with names and stories and hopes, not symbols. The Fallen must never be used as tools for political means. They deserve more than soundbites. Their families deserve our care, our memory, our gratitude.
Our country deserves a people that will keep their promise to the Fallen and to one another. This place, despite the upheaval, remains a repository of the hopes and dreams of millions within our borders and around the world. If we allow cruelty to settle into our hearts and our policies, we betray the ideals that the men and women we honor today died defending. Their deaths demand more of us - more decency, more courage, more grace.
May God bless their sacrifice — tender, terrible, and true. And may we honor them not just with words, or flags, or moments of silence, but by living the kind of lives full of the joy, freedom, and everyday beauty that they never got to come back to.
That is the memorial they deserve.
