Mac-Coleman

27 May 2013 –

They Rest Close to Where They Fell

Memorial Day was established in the aftermath of the Civil War.  At least 600,000 Americans, mostly young men, were killed between 1861 and 1865, all on U.S. soil.  Since then, generations of Americans have maintained the graves of those who fought, died, and were buried close to where they fell.  Near the battlements, sunken roads, and hilltops of places such as Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Antietam, rows of grave stones mutely remind us of the friction of the opposing lines of troops and the sounds of dying men.  A war fought in one’s home, in one’s cornfields, and on one’s market roads must never be forgotten.  Memorial Day should always remain a sacred expression of how and why our war cemeteries came to be. 

But, since the Civil War, our troops have almost exclusively fought and died far from home.  This is because our Civil War fundamentally resolved the gaping conflicts that had previously prevented our coalescing as a nation.  Since then, we have worked on residual domestic issues with more peaceful means.   To help, God gave the “Grand Experiment” called the United States a choice land between two vast oceans to the East and the West and lesser powers to the North and the South.  Despite our mistakes, He has protected us from external enemies as few other countries ever have been protected.       

Since the Civil War, in our remote enclave, we have built a powerful nation.  We also have used our military instrument of national power to extend U.S. influence to more places in the world than has any great empire in history.  When we have wisely sent our troops into harm’s way in some distant land, we have fought and succeeded under the banner of freedom and liberty for us and for others.  When we have unwisely sent troops to fight and die under such a banner, the unbending principles of war have eventually mocked our banner and exposed us to the harsh consequences of our mistakes.  In every case, all glory should rest with the troops who took the fight to the enemy, and all criticism should rest with our leaders for answering badly the challenge of the moment.       

In the last 150 years, Americans in uniform have fought just about everywhere on the globe in the following conflicts:  the Spanish-American War,  World War One, The Russian Expedition, Nicaragua, Honduras, World War Two, Korea, the Cold War, VietNam, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Beirut, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq again, and Libya.  From these conflicts and others, we have returned most of our fallen troops to be buried in American soil.  In some of these conflicts, thousands of Americans died for allied freedom and were buried in now well-manicured cemeteries, close to where they fell. 

In November 1972, I was nineteen years old and living in southern France.  I visited the Rhône American Cemetery at Draguignan, about forty miles west of Cannes, near the town of St. Raphael.  This 12 ½-acre cemetery holds 860 graves and a wall with the names of 294 missing-and-presumed-dead soldiers from the U.S. Seventh Army’s invasion of Southern France in August 1944.   I learned that the invasion originally was to take place in June 1944, a simultaneous landing with the larger one at Normandy.  Together, they were to create a two-front offensive against German forces in France.  But, we didn’t have enough landing craft to support two landings at once; therefore, we had to wait until August 1944 to open the southern front.  The Seventh Army eventually landed and fought its way 400 miles northward to join up with the expanded Normandy forces.  Our unified forces created a front that stretched from the North Sea to the Mediterranean.  On that bright fall afternoon in 1972, I reverently stood among gently contoured rows of crosses, trying to take in the solemnity of my surroundings.  I experienced something there that my military service throughout the world has since reinforced.  In the shade of French oleanders and cypress trees, I felt as if I were on an American hillside amidst heroes who had fought valiantly for freedom and who were buried close to where they fell.  Nearly forty years later, I feel that same reverence every day the Stars and Stripes fly in front of our home.