What is the appropriate way to mark Memorial Day?
Scenes of GIs mooning for their girls back home, baseball, hot dogs and Mom’s apple pie were a staple of Hollywood movies about World War II. But those scenes never rang true with any of the World War II combat vets I’ve talked to. What they recall obsessing over was the misery around them: the weather, the hunger and the constant fear of maiming or death.
War isn’t pretty. It’s nothing to wax nostalgic about.
The war that soldiers know is about service and sacrifice. For some, that meant never seeing another sunrise, never holding their folks or family again. An appreciation of that harsh reality is what gave rise to Memorial Day. It’s a single day, just one day, where we are meant to pause and remember those who gave everything for us.
To be fair to American sensibilities, every national holiday has become commercialized. It is easy to track the seasons at local pharmacies, where the paraphernalia on the shelves rotate to service Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter and Mother’s Day in rapid succession.