Memorial Day letters are hard for me. Those who died in war deserve to be remembered even as our unique day of remembrance springs from a desire for reconciliation and brotherhood. As a boy, I saw it as a holiday that marked the beginning of summer and the merciful end of school, for ten weeks anyway. It is not a holiday though but a day to reflect on a bitter mix of honor, bravery, sacrifice, loss, heartache, and the folly of war. Death and loss are hardly the stuff of good business relations.
I thought about punting this week by reproducing one of the many fine poems about the tragedy of war, only to find that they inspired in me an appropriate melancholy. Looking at the image of the poet-soldier Joyce Kilmer I am reminded that war robs us of our collective futures by destroying the hope and promise of youth. In his poem Rouge Bouquet he wrote:
In a wood they call the Rouge Bouquet
There is a new-made grave today,
Built by never a spade nor pick
Yet covered with earth ten meters thick.
There lie many fighting men,
Dead in their youthful prime,
Never to laugh nor love again
Nor taste of the summertime.
They fought as men but appear as boys to me. Kilmer was 31 when a sniper’s bullet took his life at the Second Battle of Marne. He left behind him a wife and infant child. He also left no doubt as to either his bravery or his talent. I shall leave it to him to close my Memorial Day message.
“Farewell!
Farewell!
Comrades true, born anew, peace to you!
And your memory shine like the morning-star.
Brave and dear,
Shield us here.
Farewell!”
The entire poem and a photo of Kilmer can be found here https://poets.org/poem/rouge-bouquet