[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 72 (Thursday, May 26, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Page S6005]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              MEMORIAL DAY

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, this coming Monday, Americans across the 
Nation will hang flags at their doors and place small flags and flowers 
on the gravesites of loved ones and soldiers in a tradition that 
stretches deep into history, perhaps back to the advent of warfare.
  The selection of the last Monday in May is unique to the United 
States, but remembering and honoring those fallen in battle is deeply 
ingrained in the human heart. On this day, these sons and fathers, 
uncles and brothers and, more recently, daughters and mothers, aunts 
and nieces are family members to us all. Lost to us too early, their 
images remain frozen in time, young faces trying to look stern in crisp 
uniforms. Their sacrifices on battlefields from the Argonne to Tripoli, 
Pearl Harbor to Iwo Jima, Porkchop Hill to Hamburger Hill, Kabul to 
Baghdad have kept the Nation safe and carried the American ideals of 
liberty and democracy across the surface of the globe.
  This week, as the Senate struggled and ultimately overcame an arcane 
but fundamental challenge to our constitutional system of checks and 
balances, we have, I believe, honored the memory of all of those 
soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. They defended the Nation and the 
Constitution from without; a bipartisan group of Senators this week 
defended it from within, thank God.
  I rejoice that 14 Senators could rise above partisan politics to 
understand and preserve the carefully crafted balance of powers 
inscribed in our Constitution. Without the Constitution, the millions 
of lives and billions of dollars spent over the years on our Nation's 
defense, the flower of our youth and our hard-earned treasure, would 
have gone for naught. Our form of Government, acknowledging the might 
of the majority but protecting the rights of the minority, balancing 
populous States against States with smaller populations, preserving the 
voice and will of the people as the ultimate check against the rise of 
a tyrant king, that is our greatest treasure. It is the preservation of 
our form of Government that merits committing our young to the bloody 
horrors of battle.
  It is perhaps appropriate, in this context, that the Senate's battle 
is concluded just before Memorial Day, which originated after our 
Nation's most divisive and bloody war ever fought on our home soil. The 
Civil War pit over 2.2 million Union soldiers against just over 1 
million Confederate soldiers, resulting in almost 600,000 deaths, a 
third in battle and the rest from war's accompanying furies of disease 
and privation. It is a tribute to the heart's powers of healing that 
soon after the war, individuals and communities could put aside their 
differences in the graveyard and simply mourn their losses together.
  Over 42 million American patriots have risked their lives for our 
Nation since the Revolutionary War. Over 17 million war veterans, of 
among over 25 million veterans of military service, live among us 
still. I salute them all, and thank them and their families for their 
bravery and their patriotism.
  Of the 42 million Americans who saw battle during their military 
service, over 650,000 died in battle. That is 650,000 families who 
received the terrible news that their loved one had been killed. In 
World War II, the tragic news often came by telegram, and Americans 
learned to dread the sight of those envelopes.
  As of May 23, 2005, in connection with Operation Iraqi Freedom, 1,623 
families have answered the door to the solemn faces of two officers 
whose hard duty it is to report the tragic news that another life has 
been lost. Another 186 families have gotten the same sad news coming 
from Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. My prayers go out to 
these families. There are no words that can console the grieving heart 
at times like these. The widow's flag, folded with care after a 
military ceremony, offers little comfort. But these brave men and 
women, and the families they leave behind, are part of a long chain of 
sacrifice and grief that firm the resolve of the Nation. Never should 
we forget their service to the Nation and the Constitution. Never 
should we squander their sacrifice on momentary partisan advantages 
that erode the integrity of the Constitution and, in turn, the 
continued health and vitality of our form of government.
  On this Memorial Day, and on every Memorial Day, I urge Americans to 
put out their flags and to honor the fallen. I further urge them, in 
the spirit of those first Memorial Days, to put aside partisanship in 
favor of true patriotism, and to love and preserve our Nation and our 
Constitution in a lasting tribute to those who have given their lives 
in its defense.
  As is my custom on these occasions, I would like to close with a 
poem. This piece is by Edgar Guest, and is called, ``Memorial Day.''

                              Memorial Day

     The finest tribute we can pay
     Unto our hero dead today,
     Is not a rose wreath, white and red,
     In memory of the blood they shed;
     It is to stand beside each mound,
     Each couch of consecrated ground,
     And pledge ourselves as warriors true
     Unto the work they died to do.

     Into God's valleys where they lie
     At rest, beneath the open sky,
     Triumphant now o'er every foe,
     As living tributes let us go.
     No wreath of rose or immortelles
     Or spoken word or tolling bells
     Will do today, unless we give
     Our pledge that liberty shall live.

     Our hearts must be the roses red
     We place above our hero dead;
     Today beside their graves we must
     Renew allegiance to their trust;
     Must bare our heads and humbly say
     We hold the Flag as dear as they,
     And stand, as once they stood, to die
     To keep the Stars and Stripes on high.

     The finest tribute we can pay
     Unto our hero dead today
     Is not of speech or roses red,
     But living, throbbing hearts instead,
     That shall renew the pledge they sealed
     With death upon the battlefield;
     That freedom's flag shall bear no stain
     And free men wear no tyrant's chain.

  ``No Tyrant's Chain.''
  I yield the floor.

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