[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 70 (Friday, May 23, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5088-S5089]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              FALLEN HEROS

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, as the traditional start of the summer 
outdoor season approaches, advertisers are busily reminding us that we 
have only three days to ready our big yards for summer, or that hooray, 
we have an extra day to spend on outdoor chores--using their newest 
tools, gadgets, and products, of course. Well, Mr. President, most of 
us will enjoy an extra day this weekend. That is cause for celebration. 
However, the purpose is to celebrate our fallen heros, not to celebrate 
another opportunity to spend money.
  Memorial Day is set aside to remember the final sacrifice made by 
many brave men and women in the defense of our Nation and our ideals of 
liberty and justice. Though in many cases, years have passed since they 
laid down their lives for us, the memory of these fallen heros should 
not fade from our hearts, drowned out by the din of advertising or 
buried beneath a tide of sales circulars. I urge my colleagues, and the 
American public, to pause for a moment this weekend, that they fly 
their flags, pause to set aside their dirt-covered gloves, to brush the 
grass clippings from their pants legs, and to sit for a moment in the 
sun-dappled shade of an ancient tree, and thank these men and women who 
have--to paraphrase the preamble to our mighty Constitution--provided 
for the common defense, promoted the general welfare, and secured the 
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
  In the United States, our fallen soldiers have been honored and 
remembered on Memorial Day since the time of the Civil War. That tragic 
conflict spawned so many spontaneous gestures of remembrance in our 
country that the location and the date of the first Memorial Day or 
Decoration Day--Decoration Day, as it was called--Ceremony is disputed.
  One of the most moving and famous of the early Memorial Day tributes 
occurred in Columbus, Mississippi. On April 26, 1866, the women of 
Columbus gathered to decorate the graves of their husbands, brothers, 
lovers and friends who had been buried four years earlier after the 
Battle of Shiloh in a plot now known as Friendship Cemetery. The plot 
contained the remains of 1500 confederate soldiers, but it also was the 
final resting place for 100 fallen federal troops.
  The time was reconstruction. In 1866, much of the South was under 
military occupation and was impoverished. Resentment and hatred still 
ran high on both sides of the Mason Dixon line.
  But, to these war-weary women, the time for hostilities was over. 
After scattering flowers on the graves of their own men, they decorated 
the graves of the union men with magnolia blossoms.
  But, like so many of our religious and secular days of remembrance, 
the origin and purpose of Memorial Day have become at least partially 
obscured by the more immediate pleasures of a day off, the flash and 
danger of a car race or the anticipation of good food at a picnic.
  Let me quote from a book, The Good War, an oral history of World War 
II by Studs Terkel. In 1982, a woman of thirty told Terkel: ``I can't 
relate to World War II. It's in schoolbook texts, that's all. Battles 
that were won, battles that were lost. Or costume dramas you see on TV. 
It's just a story in the past. It's so distant, so abstract. I don't 
get myself up in a bunch about it.''
  Without a continued awareness of the real significance of this 
national day of remembrance, we may eventually also largely forget the 
difficult and invaluable lessons of the human cost and the ultimate 
tragedy of all warfare. Particularly today, when armed conflicts such 
as Desert Storm may seem glamorous, even entertaining and almost 
antiseptic in their efficiency, we must not forget as a nation that war 
always means death, destruction, broken homes, broken families, twisted 
and maimed bodies and devastation.
  While this Nation must never shrink from armed conflict if that is 
the course we must take to protect our freedoms, we must also never 
forget nor minimize the horror of war, else we may someday risk its 
grisly consequences too easily.

  So it is my hope, that on this coming Memorial Day, all Americans 
will take a few moments to remember the brave men and women who have 
fought and died to preserve this great nation and its principles of 
liberty and freedom. The personal suffering and sacrifice endured by 
our fallen soldiers and their families for the sake of our country must 
not go without a measure of recognition by each of us on this most 
solemn of days. These were real people, not just statistics in a 
history book or names chiseled on stone. These were young men and women 
with sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, hopes, dreams, aspirations 
and fears just like the rest of us. At some future time, God forbid, 
the names of our own sons, daughters and grandchildren could very well 
be among those that are read at a ceremony honoring our fallen 
soldiers.
  Nothing confronts us with our common humanity--with our shared 
responsibilities as citizens and with a renewed appreciation for the 
worth of our sacred and fragile freedoms like a contemplation of our 
national conflicts, and the sorrow, heroism, death and sacrifice that 
has accompanied each of them.
  This weekend thousands of American families will visit cemeteries 
around the nation to remember husbands,

[[Page S5089]]

wives, sons, daughters, grandfathers, great grandfathers and friends 
who paid the ultimate price in this nation's conflict. All of us need 
to take time to show our solidarity with their grief and their 
sacrifice; to fly the flags at our homes, schools, cemeteries and 
public places; to walk the eerie quiet of Antietam or Bull Run; visit 
the local veterans' cemeteries; lay some flowers on the tomb of a 
fallen soldier; spend a quiet moment at the monuments to our honored 
war dead; take our children in tow and teach them about all the brave 
young men and women who have paid so dearly in the past so that future 
generations can be free; and through that conscious effort and those 
small individual acts put a very human face on Memorial Day. Remember, 
spontaneous acts of remembrance such as these were what spawned 
Memorial Day in the first place. And they will always be the most 
meaningful tributes of all.

       In Flanders fields the poppies blow
       Between the crosses, row on row,
       That mark our place; and in the sky
       The larks, still bravely singing, fly
       Scarce heard amid the guns below.
       We are the Dead. Short days ago
       We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
       Loved and were loved, and now we lie
       In Flanders fields.
       Take up our quarrel with the foe:
       To you from failing hands we throw
       The torch; be yours to hold it high.
       If ye break faith with us who die
       We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
       In Flanders fields.

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