Quote from Forum Archives on May 29, 2000, 6:43 pm

Posted by: BJAXSON <BJAXSON@...>

Greetings,
Today is Memorial Day (observed) and it is also my birthday. If it's OK, I
thought I would send *you* a gift. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Buck

Don't forget me, the fallen American soldier

I peer upward, through the dark blue ripples of Pearl Harbor, and I watch the
tourists who visit my tomb in this sunken warship, and I wonder if they will
remember.

I hear the crash of waves on the Normandy coast as they echo back and forth
through a sea of white crosses - one of them mine - and I pray the freedom
won at such a cost will be worn honorably.

I lie amid a garden of stone at Arlington, revered by my country because I
gave the last full measure of devotion, and I hope we have learned from our
sacrifices.

I am a fallen soldier, and this is Memorial Day - my day. Will you pause from
your holiday just long enough to reassure me?

There are so many of me.

I lie in the countryside of New England, mute evidence to the birth pangs of
the United States of America. I fought, I died, I fired the shot heard round
the world, to make you free. Can I rest in the knowledge that the Republic is
thriving? That it is a land of freedom for everyone?

And I am here, beneath the gentle, sloping ground of Vicksburg, where warm
spring winds twine around the rows and rows of markers, and visitors trace
the writings on my headstone.

But do they understand the message there? The hatreds and distrust of those
days, the ones that split my country and tore me from all that I loved, are
they gone?

I lie beneath a mile of water, buried at sea after some battle whose name is
no longer important to anyone, and I want to know that I am not forgotten,
and that a lesson was learned.

Above me, the great ships of commerce pass. They don't still carry the lust
and greed that led the world to war a half-century ago, and took me to this
dark place, do they?

I also lie in an unmarked grave somewhere in Asia, my loved ones knowing only
that I am missing in action, having never had even the assurance that they
could mourn for me.

I was proud to serve my country, and accepted my duty on the faith I had in
my leaders. Can Americans trust their leaders today? Has war become the hated
thing it should be? Have the guns gone silent?

Today, between the barbecues and beaches, think about me and what I hope I
have given you.

Honor me by nurturing and protecting all that is good about this country, and
I will lie in peace.

By Jim Bishop, executive editor of The Victoria (TX) Advocate. Contact him at
[email protected].