Memorial Day Memories

Somewhere, in my parents' big stash of photos, there's one of me as a Brownie Scout, marching in a Memorial Day parade.

(I bet it was the Bicentennial year - I would have been 7, so about the right age to be an older Brownie, and also, I could see them doing a bigger deal for that year).

I still kind of remember it - we got to carry small flags in the parade and march as a troop. We got instructed on flag etiquette, the idea that this was a symbol of our country, and so, to be treated with respect (and we were all pretty serious little kids who didn't want to displease the grownups, even beyond the fundamental fact that we BELIEVED in the flag as a symbol of what America stood for - freedom, and liberty, and being able to pursue your own path, and also things like people helping other people). I remember going to the Dodd's store with my mom to buy a pair of white gloves, because we were told on formal occasions we should wear white gloves with our Brownie uniforms.

And this was the mid 70s (As I said, 1976 stands out in my mind as the likely year), so the World War II veterans would have been still fairly young men - some in their mid 40s or early 50s. There were even a few old men who fought in World War I who were still robust enough to walk part of the way. (I think all the World War I veterans are gone, now. Most of the World War II ones are going....I still know a couple people who were in at the tail end of the combat, but they are way up in years, and I know one man, a bit older than my father, who was involved with the Berlin Airlift after the war).

I dunno. Say what you will but I think having known people who experienced that kind of history leaves an impression on kids. Most of the WWII veterans I knew didn't really talk about their service - I think for a lot of them a coping mechanism was to put their experiences away in a mental box labeled Not To Be Opened - but once in a while someone would mention something, and the older female relatives I had talked about home-front things like rationing and how to manage to travel when there was little gas and no new tires.

Also, I have seen - and my mother still has, tucked away somewhere - a scrapbook HER grandmother kept about World War I. One of my great-uncles was an infantryman (I never knew him; he was gassed and while he was one of the lucky ones who got to go back home, he died of pneumonia before I was born, probably because the gas permanently weakened his lungs). It's fascinating, all the more so because these are things a relative of mine touched and experienced - my mom has a piece of the French scrip he was paid in (it has a bee printed on it). And there are photos. And the oddest thing in the collection is a piece of German propaganda - printed in English, dropped on the American troops - essentially telling them to give up, because their president does not care about them and has sent them to be slaughtered. Great-Uncle Burt sent it home with considerable amusement and from the report in the scrap book, it was kind of a nine-days-wonder in little Rapid River. (It was even written up in the newspaper). The attitude was very much, "What fools they are if they think we'll fall for that" - even given the brutality of what infantrymen experienced in World War I.

Memorial Day is, in part, a day to remember that. Oh, I know, properly it is Decoration Day (and some folks around home - I mean, Southern Oklahoma - still call it that). And the idea is that was when you went to the cemetery and remembered those who died while in the armed services, and you also cleaned up the graves of family members and put flowers or wreaths on them.

(And I guess now not everyone knows it? I remember walking into a class on one November 11 to a lively argument between students as to whether that day was Memorial Day or Veterans' Day. In my slightly-grumpy-oldster manner, I intoned, "The eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month" and talked about the Treaty of Versailles even though it was a stats class).

And yeah, I get that in some circles patriotism is out of fashion, and perhaps even knowing that kind of historical stuff is out of fashion. But: War literally IS Hell, and I tend to think that people who don't know history, if not exactly being condemned to repeat it, may make some of the same mistakes in that past, and ALSO they do not appreciate as much some of the things that came before them.

(That said: we do seem to always fight the "last" war - WWI was fought somewhat like the Napoleonic wars, WWII was fought somewhat like WWI.....and if we had a world war now, I suspect it would be over in a (literal and atomic) flash. Chilling to think of....)

I don't know. Maybe I get cranky about this because I'm becoming a bit of an oldster (just having been around, and old enough to remember, the Bicentennial, makes me ancient in some people's eyes) but also because my family is, as I've said, demographically "weird" (my parents were both late-in-life babies to older parents, so my family stretches back over fewer generations than some: my grandparents' generation, on both sides, were involved with World War I; my parents had older cousins or in one case an older brother who fought in World War II....and so maybe 20th century American history has always seemed more lively and personal to me because I knew people who were there for so very much of it.

(And oh, how I wish my dad's dad had talked more about his experiences - or I had listened better - he was an experimental pilot in an early Army Air Corps program in World War I, and did training in Oklahoma and Texas. How little any of us knew that some day I'd live on one of the states - though not close to the same location - where he trained.)