Country Editor’s Reflections on Memorial Day

Sometimes on one of those late spring days when Memorial Day comes, you can almost see them, marching, marching onward, the legion of the forgotten dead. In the soft stillness and solitude of a country graveyard in the evening hush, occasionally you can hear the muffled beat of a drum as the endless ranks of that forgotten legion slip by, file after file, in ghostly procession never ending.

They materialize, these war dead whom we honor Memorial Day, somehow, when the eye wanders idly across old grave markers to halt at a small obelisk with worn carving making the words almost indecipherable: Died at Andersonville, Dec. 13, 1864. A rusted metal emblem droops over the ground. Once shiny and new, it then bore proudly the inscription of the Grand Army of the Republic. Once flowers were strewn upon it to honor this grave of a lad of 18 who marched so proudly away to war in 1863, and died so miserably in a Georgia prison camp just before Christmas. And now he keeps step with his comrades, forever, as the legion of the forgotten dead marches by

Hear the whispered cadence. On they come.

The ranks are silent now. Those ragged fellows there at the front were at Valley Forge. See their bloody bare feet, which left such grim footprints in the howling Pennsylvania snow. They died for freedom. And they march past.

Dirty gray coats, butternut trousers, mingle now with uniforms of blue in the still columns filing past. The passions which set men from north and south at each other’s throats are erased by the chill of death. All are still, now. Little remembered are Antietam, Shiloh, obscure place names made immortal because of the bravery of valiant opponents who died there. They step silently along, slouching, yet moving with deceptive swiftness. They march eternally for they are the forgotten legion of the dead.

Others move up. Quiet now, listen. Isn’t that the chorus of “Over There,” so softly you can barely hear the words that . . . “The Yanks Are Coming. The Yanks Are Coming” . . . It seems you can hear them singing it softly as they step along . . . “and we won’t be back til it’s over, over there.” These came back, in metal boxes.

Somehow it makes the march seem shorter if the men can sing. Any military man knows that, and so we hear the faint chorus as they move by with their round helmets and brown puttees, the wide-eyed innocence with which they approached the grim tasks of war erased by the stark reality of the Argonne and Soissons.

Then, in a more sentimental age, a buddy never was killed in Flanders mud, young life cut short by an impersonal artillery shell flung into the air from miles distant. He had “gone West” or “bought the farm.” But no matter what the term employed, they did die, did American men by the thousands, in France to make the world safe for democracy. And so the silent ranks of the legion of the forgotten dead are swollen with those who march forever in World War I garb of drab khaki.

These next uniforms seem more familiar. Isn’t that a flight jacket? And those men aren’t keeping in step . . . Oh, that explains it. Army Air Corps. They should have flown by, but in the legion of the forgotten dead, all must walk in ghostly procession to their final encampments. Other place names recognized: Ploesti, Schweinfurt, Regensburg.

Red walks by, an apparition. Who now recalls a tiny Italian town named Roverto up there in the Brenner Pass, or remembers a boy named Red crouched in the waist of a B-25?

What ghastly remembrance of things past is this which intrudes on a happy, carefree holiday with picnics and ball games? Why think now about Red with body crumpled and his head sliced off from a burst of flak from a German 88 far below? Red’s mother put a little gold star in the front window of home in a little Pennsylvania town, and on Memorial Day the American Legion and VFW put a flag and flowers on his grave. Is this remembrance? Red marches on with the legion, the legion of the forgotten dead. With him in awesome numbers are the sailors from Pearl Harbor and Okinawa and all the vast expanse of the seas where death came so swiftly; with him the GIs whose blood made the cold gray ocean on the beach called Omaha dull, rusty red; who fell in Italy and France and Germany and nameless islands in the Pacific.

They trudge along so quietly now; the Marines who died in the sands of Iwo Jima and caves on Okinawa. There are many of them, so very, very many . . . see them march by. Finally they pass. No such euphemism as going West for these. Their comrades said simply they got it.

 Red got it. All these got it. They are the legion of the forgotten dead. They are the reason the Stars and the Stripes flies over the Capitol instead of a Nazi emblem or the Rising Sun.

But who remembers now those frightening days of the 1940s?

Here come others along. The numbers of silent marchers are fewer now. There’s a group of Marines dragging sleds loaded with bodies of their comrades, frozen, grotesque caricatures of men, lashed in layers. They fell in Korea at a place called Chosin Reservoir, and the Marines vowed to fight their way out and take their dead with them.

They did, and now they pull those sleds along in the ranks of the forgotten legion forever. There are GIs in the group from Pork Chop Hill and Pusan; those whose families received the ominous telegrams with the introduction: “The War Department regrets to inform you. . . .”

On they march. They’re almost past, now. This last group of marchers is looking off to one side, as if they’re unsure of their reception. Hear the whispers from the Navy pilots and Marines and GIs of Vietnam. They’re by, now, finally, all of them.

And the legion of the forgotten dead has disappeared once more, shrouded in the mist of antiquity. The backbone of every American should stiffen in a salute on this day to the legion of the war dead of our country—that forgotten army whose sacrifices mean that we live in freedom (emp. added).

March on, brave legions. For some remember. . . . And solemnly resolve: Your march for freedom has not been in vain.

Adam Kelly
(1924-1990)

[Note:  This article appeared in the May 27, 1996, edition of The Wheeling Intelligencer, Wheeling, WV. Adam Kelly passed away in 1990. Likely, had he lived to update this piece, the article would have included the fallen from the many conflicts America has been involved in since his passing.]

And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:32-40)