Who Will Sound The Call to Service?

By Jeff McCausland
The Washington Post
Monday, July 2, 2007; Page A19

A soldier’s day was once regulated by bugle calls, from morning reveille to chow call at noon to retreat at sunset and taps late at night. Thus the phrase “to answer the bugle call” has been used to describe citizens responding to a national threat. Those who rise to this call to defend their country are the young, and they sacrifice accordingly.

We witnessed this during World War II with my father’s generation. We heard it clearly in the words of John F. Kennedy, who told us to ask not what our country can do for us but what we can do for our country. But we’ve also witnessed serious divisions.

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Our nation has been in a state of war for nearly six years. American forces have been in Iraq for more than four years, a longer commitment than during World War II. A new generation has risen to defend us once again, but strangely this time there has been no bugle call. No leader has made a broad appeal for service in a time of need, and no real request has been made for most Americans to sacrifice in any way. Most of us go about our daily lives unaffected by the trauma and tragedy that occur daily in Iraq and Afghanistan, whether we support the war or oppose it.

But some heard a call and answered. I met a number of them as I traveled to Balad, Iraq, with an air-medical team from Mississippi and California to pick up wounded GIs and Marines and ferry them to the Landstuhl military hospital in Germany and then on to Walter Reed. I met not only these injured but the many others from this generation — doctors, nurses, pilots, air crews — who tended to their needs along the way home. These caregivers are unsung heroes, and they treasure the brotherhood they share with their injured comrades. They perform countless acts of kindness and healing to little public acclaim.

All these men and women are truly extraordinary — the injured and those who care for them. They represent all of America in a mosaic of old and young, male and female, Hispanic, black, Asian, white.

They include a young Minnesota National Guardsman wounded after 14 months in Iraq. His unit had been scheduled to head home but was extended to 15 months. He is 21. Last month he lost both his legs to an explosively formed projectile.

He has a right to be bitter, but he isn’t. Two days after his personal tragedy he laughed with me in the hospital and said that when he was hurt he told his sergeant, “I guess this means I won’t have to take that PT test you scheduled for me.” He did that to keep up the morale of his buddies as they applied the tourniquets that saved his life.

I talked to an intensive care nurse who has been handling severely wounded people for more than five years. As the senior nurse, she stayed with those diagnosed as terminal. She did not want them to die alone, and she placed a personal note with their effects so their families would know that they hadn’t.

There was a soldier who had been blown from his tank by an improvised explosive device that broke his back. He was 37 and had recently joined the active Army. He continued to smile as he lay on a pillowcase decorated with scenes from “Superman” and talked about his buddies. He told me that he was sure that his kids were proud of him.

A trauma surgeon who has been operating and saving lives in Afghanistan and Iraq and at the hospital in Germany since the war began told me how he kept his morale so high: by keeping in mind always that he cared for heroes every day.

This account is not pro-war or anti-war. It is simply about war and the terrible tragedy that it is. The people I had the privilege to meet had several things in common. They all believed they had responded to the bugle call, no matter how faint. None spoke of politics or party. They came even though they did not have to — no one really asked them to — and they represent but a small fraction of their generation.

They have served, suffered, sacrificed and endured. America marks a number of patriotic moments at the onset of summer — Memorial Day, D-Day, the Fourth of July. I hope most of us take time on these days to reflect on those past and present who have sacrificed. Sadly, this reflection should also remind us that this long twilight struggle will continue no matter how the Iraq war turns in the coming months.

If we are to survive as a nation with our values intact, then we must find leaders willing to make the call.

Leaders who will call us to serve each other, to serve in our towns and cities, churches and schools and, if needed, in the military — leaders who will urge us to care for these young veterans and their families in need of our help for many years to come.

This coming together to meet a challenge has always been one of our nation’s greatest strengths, and we need that strength now.

Jeff McCausland, a retired Army colonel, is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and a visiting professor at the Penn State Dickinson School of Law. He commanded an artillery battalion during the Gulf War in 1991.

To all: Happy 4th of July.

President pays tribute to “The Fallen” U.S. troops

By Deb Riechmann, Associated Press

ARLINGTON, Va. - President Bush on Monday honored U.S. troops who have fought and died for freedom and expressed his steely resolve to succeed in the war in Iraq. “As before in our history, Americans find ourselves under attack and underestimated,” he said.

Bush marked his sixth Memorial Day as a wartime president with a somber speech at Arlington National Cemetery. He said he hoped the United States will always prove worthy of the sacrifices fallen troops have made, and recognized the grief suffered by families and friends of troops killed in war, most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Now this hallowed ground receives a new generation of heroes — men and women who gave their lives in places such as Kabul and Kandahar, Baghdad and Ramadi,” he said. “Like those who came before them, they did not want war, but they answered the call when it came. They believed in something larger than themselves. They fought for our country, and our country unites to mourn them as one.”

The president’s motorcade was greeted at Arlington by scores of tourists who waved at Bush. Just before his limousine crossed over the Potomac River into Virginia, a man held up a sign saying, “Bring our troops home.”

Members of the armed forces carrying rifles fitted with bayonets stood at attention as Bush’s motorcade wended its way through rows of white tombstones marked with tiny American flags. Some soldiers were astride horses that flinched when canons were fired, sending bluish white smoke over the cemetery.

Bush spoke under overcast skies at a marble amphitheater after he laid a wreath of red, white and blue flowers at the Tomb of the Unknowns and stood, his hand over his heart, during a drum roll and the playing of Taps. First lady Laura Bush watched the ceremony with relatives of fallen troops.

Those who have died in the Civil War, World War I, World War II and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts fought for freedoms, which come at great cost and will survive only as long as there are Americans willing to defend the nation against determined enemies, he said.

“Our enemies long for our retreat,” Bush said. “They question our moral purpose. They doubt our strength of will. Yet even after five years of war, our finest citizens continue to answer our enemies with courage and confidence.”

He noted that 174 Marines — nearly one-fourth of a battalion — recently asked to have their enlistments extended.

“Those who serve are not fatalists or cynics,” Bush said. “They know that one day this war will end as all wars do. Our duty is to ensure that its outcome justifies the sacrifices made by those who fought and died in it.”

“From their deaths must come a world where the cruel dreams of tyrants and terrorists are frustrated and foiled — where our nation is more secure from attack, and where the gift of liberty is secured for millions who have never known it.”

At least 3,452 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war in Iraq in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 325 members of the U.S. military have died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department.

Memorial Day from Oliver North: ‘Never Forget’

By Oliver North
May 28, 2007

HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii.
    
Back in the early 1950s, when I was a kid, we called it “Decoration Day.” Early in the morning of May 30, the Boy Scouts placed little American flags on the graves of those who had served in wars past.

Veterans — among them, our mailman, who had fought in World War I — came door-to-door, selling red poppies.

There was a parade down Main Street, led by a color guard and the high school band. At the town baseball field, speeches were made, prayers were said — and we were all reminded of the sacrifices made by those who had gone into harm’s way on our behalf. It was a solemn, sacred affair — for which I admit to no small amount of nostalgia.
    
In the aftermath of Vietnam — the war we wanted to forget — much of that changed. In 1971, Congress passed the National Holiday Act — turning Memorial Day into just one more three-day weekend. After that, the spirit of the day dissipated and the holiday became little more than an opportunity for half-price sales at the local mall.
    
Yet, here in Hawaii, Memorial Day still seems to have a special meaning. Some say that’s because the Aloha state boasts more than 100,000 military personnel and their dependents among 1.3 million residents. Others claim it is because of what happened here on December 7, 1941 — when 2,388 Americans perished in a surprise attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy. I’m convinced it’s some of both. This place is full of people who believe in a quaint notion: Never forget. 
    
Last week our Fox News “War Stories” team was here in Hawaii documenting the work of JPAC — the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command — the U.S. military unit responsible for recovering and identifying the 88,000 Americans who have been declared missing in action since the start of World War II. Their commitment to “never forget” is an inspiring lesson for any Memorial Day.
    
The designation “MIA” — missing in action — can be devastating for the family of any member of the U.S. Armed Forces. It can mean a lifetime of uncertainty about what happened to a loved one. But for the dedicated sleuths here at JPAC, thousands of American families would never know what happened to their missing soldier, sailor, airman, Guardsman or Marine.
    
Begun in 1973 as an effort to account for thousands of MIAs and POWs from Vietnam, JPAC is the smallest Joint Command in the U.S. military — only 445 members — yet it boasts the world’s largest skeletal forensic laboratory. The scientists, anthropologists, historians and active duty personnel here are devoted to one purpose: finding and bringing home missing U.S. servicemen.
    
The task of finding the fallen can be daunting — and sometimes downright deadly. JPAC Investigation and Recovery Teams traverse trackless deserts, negotiate snake infested jungles; plumb watery depths and scale remote mountain ranges — all to find a single MIA. Once on site, a team may spend weeks of painstaking detective work, sifting soil — literally leaving no stone unturned — hoping to find the remains of Americans who fought and died on that very ground.
    
When human remains are found they are returned to the laboratory here in Hawaii where scientists use cutting-edge forensic technology to positively identify each missing American. For many families of the fallen, questions they’ve asked for years are finally answered. And though the tools of JPAC are astonishingly sophisticated, the goal of everyone here is remarkably simple: to leave no one behind.
    
Because the people who work at JPAC are world-renowned experts at forensic identification, they are often called upon to assist in everything from criminal cases to natural disasters to horrific mass casualty calamities. After the attack on September 11, 2001, JPAC personnel were sent to Ground Zero in New York City, to the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., and to Somerset, Pa. When an Indian Ocean tsunami killed more than 200,000 people on Dec. 26, 2004, JPAC personnel were dispatched to aid in identifying the dead.
    
Yet, despite their involvement in these high-profile events, everyone here insists that their greatest satisfaction is in finding and returning missing American servicemen.

With young Americans once again fighting a brutal enemy far from home, it is significant that no other country has anything like JPAC. And no nation devotes more time, treasure and talent to bringing their fallen home than does the United States.
    
Thanks to the men and women of JPAC, every member of our Armed Forces serving in harm’s way can be certain they will never be forgotten. The commitment here — to reunite families with those who have fallen, to no more unknown soldiers, to leave no one behind — is uniquely American. It’s a comforting thought on Memorial Day. 
         
Oliver North is a nationally syndicated columnist, the host of “War Stories” on Fox News Channel and the founder of Freedom Alliance, a foundation that provides support to the troops and scholarships to the dependents of military personnel killed in action. 

http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2007/05/
memorial_day_we.html    

Memorial Day: Remember the living, too

By Paul Greenberg
The Washington Times
May 28, 2007

They are beyond it all now, the dead. They are beyond all the words, even beyond the slow, mournful sound of taps. They are beyond the muck and blood, too, thank God. Beyond the pain and death, the blood and pus, the anguish spoken and unspoken, the horror and, perhaps worse, the horror anticipated.
    
They are beyond it all now, they who went down to the sea in ships and found themselves in peril on the sea. They are beyond the acrid smoke and heart-stopping fear, the calm courage and wild rage, the sweetness of life, the sorrow and pity of its loss.
    
They have passed all that. They have passed.
    
We remember them now for our sake, not theirs. The annual rites, the little flags fluttering in the breeze, the expressions of vainglory that here and there smudges the scene…. All of this is for us, those of us who feel we must do something, feel something, today. For decency’s sake. For gratitude’s sake.
    
So we pause today in their wake, and rest under the shade of the trees, thinking of those who have already crossed that river. Far away from today’s battlefields, at an uneasy remove, we taste the fragile peace at home, and listen to the forgetful wind over the graves. The wind Alan Tate took notice of in his ode to the Confederate dead:
    Row after row with strict impunity
    The headstones yield their names to the element,
    The wind whirrs without recollection;
    In the riven troughs the splayed leaves
    Pile up, of nature the casual sacrament
    To the seasonal eternity of death….
    
How restful those lines are, as restful as emotion recollected in tranquility. But there is more to poetry than that definition of it. There is the kind of poetry that breaks through tranquility. Like Randall Jarrell’s few lines on “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”:

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
    And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
    Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
    I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
    When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
    
That is war, too, man’s oldest game, instinct and perversion. Do not turn away, but look. Stare. This is the price of our forgetful freedom.
    
There is nothing we can do for the dead now, but there is much we can do for the living. We can ask where they are, and how they fare, and see that they, and their families, are cared for. And when they are stacked in hospitals like so much cordwood, put out of sight like something indecent, we can demand more than a few showy dismissals of those who were supposed to be in charge.
    
We can ask, we can demand to know, what is being done for them and theirs. Now. For people do not live in some abstract realm — like the past or in politicians’ speeches or on the television screen — but in the here and very now. In waiting rooms. In hospital wards. In veterans’ homes.
    
Let this be a memorial day for the living, too. And let us live it, too. For today is also a day for family picnics and block parties, for good times as well as solemn rituals, a day to make the most of.
    
Today’s mix of joy and sorrow, the quick and the dead, the grief and pride — it is all as it should be. Life is to be celebrated even as we remember the dead.
    
It is a day for laughter. Laughter is a better memorial than tears. It is the ordinary sounds — of children at play, of families uniting, of old stories retold — that are the best memorial. For it is the ordinary joys of freedom, not the grandiloquent ideals, that generations sacrificed to assure. So Americans can walk the way we do — openly, freely, unafraid, even blessedly unaware. So we can look one another in the eye and say what we think. So any man can look his boss in the eye and tell him to go to hell. And any woman do the same. So we can strike roots where we are or light out for the territories.
    
For this is a big country, and all of it is still the land of opportunity. This is the land where freedom grows. This is its native soil, its natural habitat. It thrives here. But not, as this day reminds, without sacrifice. 
     
Paul Greenberg is a nationally syndicated columnist. 
*******

We are especially mindful of our “troops in the field” that are implimenting the “surge”….
http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2007/05/a_
people_awaken.html    

Rolling Thunder honors The Lost, POWs and MIAs

WASHINGTON, May 27 (UPI) — The Rolling Thunder motorcycle legion observed Memorial Day Sunday with its annual parade from the Pentagon to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.The celebration has, after 20 years, become a fixture of Memorial Day weekend in the nation’s capitol, The Washington Post reported.President George W. Bush met with several members of Rolling Thunder, who are dedicated to keeping the memories of veterans alive and honoring their sacrifices, the newspaper said.Several Vietnam veterans told the Posts they felt cheated and let down upon returning home from Southeast Asia. They said the annual parade and celebration help them deal with their sense of abandonment.Veterans at the celebration were mostly from the Vietnam War, with a few elderly Korean War veterans on hand along with some younger veterans representing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

AP – Sun May 27, 2:24 PM ET–Participants in the 20th annual Rolling Thunder Ride for Freedom cross the Memorial Bridge in Washington, Sunday, May 27, 2007. The Robert E. Lee home and Arlington National Cemetery can been seen in the background. (AP Photo/Caleb Jones)

Rolling Thunder At The White House

(CBS/AP) President George W. Bush likes a serene White House most Sundays. Every now and then, though, he is ready for a rumble.

Leaders of Rolling Thunder, the motorcycling group that raises awareness about missing veterans, roared right up the mansion’s driveway this Sunday. Bush, just back from a weekend at Camp David, stood alone outside the South Portico to meet them.

No Memorial Day weekend in the capital is complete without the ritualistic rumble of Rolling Thunder. For 20 years now, the nonprofit group has led a “Ride for Freedom” along the National Mall, a full-throttle demonstration in support of soldiers held captive or missing in action.

“How you doing, Artie? Welcome back,” the president told Artie Muller, the founder and executive director of the nonprofit group.

 
Muller led 13 visitors who came calling on eight motorcycles. The guests included Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, whose Harley-Davidson was decked out with patriotic bunting.

Bush gave out handshakes and hugs, took at look at the gleaming bikes and then invited his visitors into the Oval Office.

Rolling Thunder seeks a full accounting of veterans who are prisoners of war or are missing in action. It also advocates for fair treatment of veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and has been critical of Bush’s Veteran Affairs Department on that front.

Afterward, Muller said he presented a series of concerns to Bush.

Among them were the way the Defense Department classifies missing and captured troops and the plight of soldiers who have been discharged from military hospitals and are having trouble supporting their families.

“He’s always been very honest with us and supportive,” Muller said. “He feels that these issues need to be addressed.”

Bush held a similar greeting at the White House in 2004 for Rolling Thunder. The group endorsed him in both his presidential bids.

Overall, tens of thousands of motorcyclists took part in Sunday’s rally; major streets were closed for the event. The riders began at the Pentagon, crossed the Memorial Bridge and gathered at the somber wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Lt. Col. Bob Moore, now on duty in Iraq, told CBS News correspondent Joie Chen that he took a two-week leave to come home and ride in his fifth Rolling Thunder as a sign of respect.

“I come for my fallen brethren and also those who are still out there,” Moore said. “These are heroes, ma’am. They’re our heroes.”

After a Memorial Day ceremony, Vietnam veteran Peter Wymes touches the name of one of five Philadelphians from his unit that were killed in Vietnam, at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Philadelphia, Monday, May 28, 2007. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

UnAmerican ACLU: Aggression against military memorials

By Paul A. Morin
The Washington Times
May 27, 2007

If you think the American Civil Liberties Union’s interest in removing memorial markers from military cemeteries and other treasured locations is simply a matter of clarifying church-state jurisdictions … you’re gravely mistaken.
    
On Mount Soledad, overlooking San Diego, crosses of one kind or another have stood since 1913. The current edition, erected in 1954, was designed as a memorial to Korean War veterans. For more than 75 years, no one complained, and the cross became a treasured landmark to most of the San Diego community.
    
Then, in 1989, one atheist decided the cross on the hill offended him, and the ACLU hurried to his aid, waving the so-called “separation of church and state” doctrine.
    
Almost 20 years later — despite the outspoken wishes of the great majority of San Diego citizens and the deliberate protections of the U.S. Congress, the ACLU doggedly persists in its efforts to tear down this landmark.
    
Meanwhile, a similar showdown has been going on out in the Mojave Desert, where a 70-year-old memorial cross honors those who died in World War I. Across those seven decades, not one citizen ever filed a single complaint against the memorial. But some ACLU attorneys got wind of it, anyway, and a judge listened.
    
When Congress tried to move the cross to private property, the judge nullified the legislators’ order. Then, to add petty insult to legal injury — he has had the cross covered with a box, pending a resolution to this still-ongoing case.
    
Understand, there is big money involved here, as well as points of law. ACLU attorneys can haul down some fat fee awards when they win cases. And anyone going up against them faces a legal juggernaut of virtually limitless resources. Government officials sued by the ACLU know what’s coming, and far too often, that fear alone is enough to let the ACLU “win” another one.
    
That gives ACLU attorneys a wonderful incentive for tearing down these markers, and local citizens very little reason to oppose them.
    
Well, the American Legion is opposing them, anyway. With the strong legal assistance of the Alliance Defense Fund and Liberty Legal Institute, it has managed to keep both of these historic markers standing and saved taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
    
We believe the efforts of the ACLU are misdirected and contrary to the will of the American people and the spirit of our Constitution. Therefore, the American Legion will continue to fight for the right of all Americans to publicly display any symbol that reaffirms that we are, indeed, “one nation under God.” 
     
Paul A. Morin of Chicopee, Mass., is national commander of the 2.7 million-member American Legion, the nation’s largest veterans organization.
    

Veterans’ Lifelong Mission To Keep Memories Alive

Rolling Thunder is 20 years old. 

By Pamela Constable
The Washington Post
Sunday, May 27, 2007; Page C01

Thousands of military veterans from towns across the country cruised into the nation’s capital yesterday on polished Harleys and Hondas, filling the air with the unmistakable leonine rumble that, after 20 years, has become an intrinsic part of Memorial Day weekend in Washington.

The Rolling Thunder motorcycle legions, expected to reach several hundred thousand for today’s parade from the Pentagon to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, carry an annual message of moral support for U.S. troops fighting abroad, readjusting back home, and imprisoned or missing in action — a message as relevant today as it was when a handful of Vietnam veterans founded the group in 1987.

“We want to make sure that the soldiers coming back now from Iraq or Afghanistan, whether full or maimed or dead, are being honored and respected in a way that we never were,” said Ed Geoffrion, 62, a semiretired auditor and Navy veteran from Chicopee, Mass., with a tattoo of an eagle clutching an American flag on his left biceps. He has ridden his Harley-Davidson Road King to Washington every Memorial Day weekend since 1991.

Many of the bikers were Vietnam vets in their 60s, wearing gray ponytails and black leather vests crammed with badges, patriotic patches and military insignia; some were accompanied by their wives, sporting similar regalia. There were also several elderly Korean War vets in the crowd and a young Marine representing vets from Iraq and Afghanistan.

For some participants, the event had a theme of carefully nursed grievance, a permanent wound kept alive so future generations would not forget. Many Vietnam vets spoke with deep bitterness of being neglected and scorned after returning from combat 40 years ago, of having fought hard to win a war that they said politicians lost.

They also kept alive their permanent mission to remember soldiers who are missing or imprisoned abroad. Vendors at display booths sold packets of the names, histories and metal ID bracelets of such soldiers.

Most were from the Vietnam era, but one was a young soldier from Ohio, Keith “Matt” Maupin, who went missing after his convoy was ambushed in Iraq in April 2004. Several days later he was shown alive, as a captive, on a televised videotape. There has been no news of him since.

For other veterans in the crowd yesterday, riding to Washington with Rolling Thunder every year has become a ritual of renewed, cathartic healing, a chance to feel unabashedly patriotic and to revel in the friendly welcome they receive as they travel to the capital.

Milo Gordon, 63, a disabled vet and counselor from Wisconsin, said he felt lost and depressed for years after he came home from Vietnam. In 1993, he recounted, he happened to visit Washington and found himself at the Wall, sobbing uncontrollably over a wreath that said “thank you.”

“At that moment, I quit wanting to die and started to get involved,” he said. Now, Gordon joins a group of several hundred bikers each year in California in a Ride for the Wall. They travel east for 12 days, first on interstate highways and then on smaller roads, stopping at towns in West Virginia, where they distribute donations for schools. Residents eagerly await and celebrate their arrival.

“It is the parade we never got,” Gordon said. “When everyone wants to feed you and kids are asking for your autograph, it really pierces that emotional brick wall vets carry with them.”

Rolling Thunder riders parked their gleaming machines along Constitution Avenue yesterday and strolled around the Ellipse, relaxing and revving their spirits for their 20th annual parade today from the Pentagon, across Memorial Bridge, to the Wall.

“When we first started out, we had maybe 2,000 bikes, and nobody knew who we were. Now we are respected, and the police say we bring down the crime rate,” said Teddy Shpak, 60, a retired Veterans Affairs Department worker from Connecticut who has been to Washington every Memorial Day since 1987.

There were back-slapping reunions and tearful reminiscences. Combat units regrouped around picnics of barbecued ribs. A cluster of Marine veterans knelt to polish the brass plaques surrounding a memorial flagpole. At the Wall, vets mingled with tourists as they inched along the slab bearing 58,249 names.

Men posed for their wives in the door of an HU-1 combat helicopter used in Vietnam, decorated with a pair of boots and a display of 1968-vintage C-rations.

“See those villages? Somewhere around there is where I got shot,” a white-haired man said to his wife, peering through bifocals at the fine print on a map of Vietnam.

There were also a lot of paraphernalia, with vendors selling piles of helmets and tailors stitching insignia on new black leather jackets. Many motorcycles were decorated with personal or military touches, and a few were painted to look like the American flag.

But the showpiece of the Rolling Thunder contingent this year is Flashback, an exquisitely painted three-wheel Boss Hoss motorcycle covered with scenes depicting the Vietnam War — soldiers wading through rivers and throwing grenades; helicopters dropping napalm and evacuating wounded men from jungles.

“None of us likes to go to war,” said Lew Winters, 56, a Vietnam vet and trucking company owner from Tennessee who designed the scenes and had them professionally airbrushed on his bike last year in Florida. “But someone has to keep our freedom. This is our tribute to all of the 3.7 million who served in Vietnam.”

Winters, his wife, Wanda, and Flashback were surrounded all day by admirers who peered at the lifelike scenes in awe. Many fellow veterans tried to thank him, but he kept shaking his head and repeating, “This is for you.”

Memorial Day History, Tradition, Honor: Remembering the Fallen

By John E. Carey
May 26, 2007

Created by Civil War widows to honor their dead, Memorial Day was first called Decoration Day. The day marked the annual “decoration” of graves with flowers.

Today, Memorial Day honors all war dead, and, as at Arlington National Cemetery, it has become customary to decorate the graves with a small American Flag instead of flowers. At Arlington, soldiers pay their respects to The Fallen and place flags on the graves.

Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on May 5th, 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on May 30, 1868.

On Memorial Day, at Arlington National Cemetery, traditionally the President or Vice President lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

The occasion is also marked in almost every State on the last Monday in May. Several southern states, however, have an additional, separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead: January 19 in Texas, April 26 in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; May 10 in South Carolina; and June 3 (Jefferson Davis’ birthday) in Louisiana and Tennessee.

The newest “tradition” perhaps of Memorial Day is the annual tribute to The Fallen in Washington DC provided by “Rolling Thunder.”

The major function of Rolling Thunder®, Inc. is to publicize POW-MIA issues: To educate the public that many American prisoners of war were left behind after all previous wars and to help correct the past and to protect future veterans from being left behind should they become prisoners of war-missing in action.


Rolling Thunder is  also committed to helping American veterans from all wars.

Rolling Thunder®, Inc. is a non-profit organization. Members donate their time because they believe in the issues they support.
(See: http://www.rollingthunder1.com/)

Here is General Logan’s official order:

General Orders No.11, WASHINGTON, D.C., May 5, 1868

The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet church-yard in the land.

In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.

We are organized, comrades, as our regulations tell us, for the purpose among other things, “of preserving and strengthening those kind and fraternal feelings which have bound together the soldiers, sailors, and marines who united to suppress the late rebellion.”

What can aid more to assure this result than cherishing tenderly the memory of our heroic dead, who made their breasts a barricade between our country and its foes?

Their soldier lives were the reveille of freedom to a race in chains, and their deaths the tattoo of rebellious tyranny in arms. We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. All that the consecrated wealth and taste of the nation can add to their adornment and security is but a fitting tribute to the memory of her slain defenders.

Let no wanton foot tread rudely on such hallowed grounds. Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.

If our eyes grow dull, other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain to us.

Let us, then, at the time appointed gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with the choicest flowers of spring-time; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from his honor; let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us a sacred charge upon a nation’s gratitude, the soldier’s and sailor’s widow and orphan.

Additional Reading:

Memorial Day Part I: Letters bring a war back to life

Memorial Day Part II: Battle of the Bulge

Brothers Served Valiantly in War

On War and Love: From the 1860s

CIA Pilot From French Era In Vietnam Laid To Rest

Helo Pilot Gets Medal of Honor for Rescue of 70; Flew 22 Missions in 14 Hours

Medal of Honor Recipients Gather at the Pentagon; Share Stories of War

Tribute to Admiral Joe Metcalf, “Warrior” and Alacrity Personified

9-11 memorial takes shape at Pentagon

Veterans’ Lifelong Mission To Keep Memories Alive
(Rolling Thunder is 20 Years Old)

UnAmerican ACLU: Aggression against military memorials

Honoring the Dead and Giving Thanks Started During Another War

This year’s Rolling Thunder: 100,000 Bikes:
Rolling Thunder honors The Lost, POWs and MIAs

For a video Memorial Day Tribute we recommend:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQUFvdRdIG0

http://www.civilwarwomenblog.com/2008/12/catherine-mary-kate-hewitt.html

We remain acutely aware of the men and women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan in the war against terror.

CIA Pilot From French Era In Vietnam Laid To Rest

 WASHINGTON (AFP) – The remains of a CIA pilot shot down as he was dropping supplies to besieged French troops during the battle of Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam were Thursday laid to rest with military honors. The ceremony for James McGovern Jr, known as “Earthquake McGoon,” was held at Arlington National Cemetery in the Washington suburbs away from a media glare out of respect for the wishes of his family, a cemetery official said.

A soldier of fortune, McGovern flew in China during World War II with the Flying Tigers and was credited with destroying two enemy aircraft in the air and five on the ground.

He was captured by North Korea during the Korean war and was held as a prisoner of war for several months.

In Vietnam he worked under contract for the CIA-owned Civil Air Transport.

McGovern was killed May 6, 1954 on what was to be a final mission to air drop supplies to the last French forces holding out at Camp Isabelle during the battle of Dien Bien Phu.

“As the aircraft approached the drop zone, it was hit by anti-aircraft fire,” the Pentagon said in a statement. “The pilots attempted to fly southwest to the relative safety of Laos, but crashed along the Song (River) Ma in Houaphan Province.”

A joint US-Laotian military team visited the site of the wreck in 1997 and 1998, finding small fragments of aircraft wreckage but no graves.

They returned in 2002 and excavated the site, recovering human remains from an isolated burial.

Using dental comparisons and mitrochondrial DNA, scientists identified the remains as McGovern’s.

The French lost the battle of Dien Bien Phu, losing some 3,000 French soldiers, with the Vietnamese dead estimated at between 8,000 and 10,000.

But the battle marked a turning point in the conflict, paving the way towards independence for Vietnam and ending almost a century of French colonialism in Indochina.
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Memorial Day Tribute to “Earthquake” McGoon

By John E. Carey

James B. “Earthquake McGoon” McGovern Jr. was a World War II fighter ace with nine enemy aircraft to his credit.  He flew for Gen. Claire L. Chennault and the 14th Air Force: the famous Curtiss P-40 Warhawk squadron with the tiger shark teeth painted on the noses of their aircraft.

“Earthquake McGoon” was a 1940s cartoon character that shook the earth when he walked.  James McGovern earned the nickname “Earthquake” because he always lived his life bigger and bolder than most others.

James McGovern died in Laos plane crash in May 6, 1954, when his C-119 Flying Boxcar cargo plane was hit by ground fire while parachuting a howitzer to the besieged French garrison at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam. The day after the crash and deaths of McGovern and Buford, the garrison at Dien Bien Phu surrendered.

At the end of World war II, James B. “Earthquake McGoon” McGovern Jr. went to work for Civil Air Transport (CAT), an airline formed by Gen. Claire L. Chennault and owned by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  The airline allowed the United States to covertly support operations of military allies.  McGovern died while supporting  the French militarty in Vietnam.

The fact that CAT was owned by the CIA and the CIA was used to support the French military in Vietnam was classified until the 1990s.

During the American involvement in Vietnam, Cat becake known as “Air America” but remained a part of the CIA.

James B. “Earthquake McGoon” McGovern’s skeletal remains were discovered in an unmarked grave in northern Laos in 2002. They were identified in September 2006 by laboratory experts at the U.S. military’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii. McGovern is credited as being one of the first two Americans to die in combat in Vietnam, the other being Wallace Buford.

On February 24, 2005, James McGovern was posthumously awarded (along with his co-pilot Wallace Buford, and 6 other surviving pilots) the Legion of Honour with the rank of Knight by the President of France for their actions to supply Dien Bien Phu during the 57 day siege.
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Memorial Day Part II: Battle of the Bulge

By John E. Carey
First Published
December 30, 2006

Aging veterans of another war are this week recalling their battles, their sacrifices, their losses and their triumphs. This is the 62nd winter since the “Battle of the Bulge” in World War II.

In 1944 the combined allied armies of the European Theater, made up mostly of British and American troops under the Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower, landed in Normandy, France on D-Day, June 6th. The armies assaulted the German defenders of “Fortress Europe.” Casualties on both sides were staggering. On D-Day alone, total Allied casualties were estimated at 10,000, including 2,500 dead.

After D-Day, the Allied armies plunged into the German defenders and fought their way across France. From June until December, 1944, the Allies advanced while the Germans retreated, all the while each side inflicting heavy casualties upon the foe.

On July 20, 1944, a senior German staff officer, Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, planted a bomb at Hitler’s “Wolf’s Lair” — his command post for the Eastern Front in Rastenburg, Prussia. Hitler survived.

In the purge that followed, along with many others, Germany’s hero of the North Africa campaign, the “Desert Fox,” Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, who also had commanded the German defenses in France and along the Atlantic Wall on D-Day, was implicated in the plot and eliminated by Hitler.

In December of that 1944, German ground forces were struggling but unbowed. Besieged by Russia in the east, Hitler elected to surge his forces westward in the face of the Allies in an attempt to retake the port of Antwerp. The Allies were assembled in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium and poised for the final lunge into Germany itself.

Because Adolph Hitler would not suffer a defeat while he still had combat ready troops, the world’s best tanks, and other military assets still ready for a fight, the “Battle of the Bulge” may have been inevitable.

Hitler’s forces began to ramp up their activity with probing attacks along the American lines as early as November 27, 1944. Even so, Hitler’s gambit which became known as the “Battle of the Bulge” took the allies totally by surprise.

Germany launched the assault on December 16, 1944. In the winter snows of Belgium, the Nazis used their Blitzkrieg tactics forged in battle all over Europe.

Germany’s Generals were under no illusions when they launched into what would become known as the “Battle of the Bulge.” They knew this assault may be the last gasp of a mighty army.

But the Germans, aided by dense cloud cover which prevented Allied air power from attacking them, attacked on the ground with speed and ferocity.

For Germany, this battle was an all or nothing affair. The Germans raced for Antwerp, led by an SS armored column under the command of SS Gruppenführer Joachim Peiper. Peiper’s had to capture fuel for his tanks as they attacked forward. Peiper took no prisoners, ordering the execution of hundreds of Americans captured by his column. He also massacred Belgian civilians in the town of Stavelot.

The fighting was fierce.

A participant at the Belgian town of Bastogne recorded the events this way: “We were not well equipped, having just gotten out of combat in Holland. We were particularly short of winter clothing and footwear….We became completely surrounded by Germans and our field hospital was overrun by a German attack. We had put the hospital in what would normally have been a safe place, but no place is safe when you are completely surrounded. At this time, we were not able to receive air resupply because the weather was absolutely frightful. It was very, very cold and snowy. Visibility was often measured in yards.”

The German commander demanded that the Americans surrender.

The American commander, acting Division Commander General Tony McAuliffe of the 101st Airborne, penned a one word reply to his German counterpart: “Nuts.”

The Americans prevailed. Colonel Edward Shames of the 506th Parachute Infantry, 101st Airborne, wrote, “After 29 days of hell, we were relieved from the area around Bastogne and headed elsewhere to fight the remaining battles of World War II.”

Two days before Christmas the weather began to lift and Allied air power began to pound the Germans. Meanwhile, Patton’s Third Army made the largest and fastest redeployment from one enemy line to another in the history of the U.S. Army.

The day after Christmas, the siege of Bastogne was over – but the “Battle of the Bulge” and spin-off engagements would rage for almost one more month.

The Allies could not be certain that the Germans had been defeated in their plan until January 25, 1945. The “Battle of the Bulge” had raged for more than 40 days.

Today we remember and salute our fathers and grandfathers who fought so bravely to bring us our freedom and end World War II – especially those participants of the “Battle of the Bulge.”