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Home » For Memorial Day

For Memorial Day

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve posted this song before, but I think it bears repeating, especially on Memorial Day.

It’s Tim McGraw’s extraordinarily moving song “If You’re Reading This“:

If you’re readin’ this
My momma’s sittin’ there
Looks like I only got a one way ticket over here.
I sure wish I could give you one more kiss
War was just a game we played when we were kids
Well I’m layin’ down my gun
I’m hanging up my boots
I’m up here with God and we’re both watchin’ over you

So lay me down
In that open field out on the edge of town
And know my soul
Is where my momma always prayed that it would go.
If you’re readin’ this I’m already home…

The first time I ever heard the song I got the chills as the lyrics unfolded and I realized what it was about, and then again and again as the heartstrings were jerked harder and harder as the song went on.

Most of us do, or should, feel a very strong gratitude to the men and women who sacrificed their lives to defend liberty here and abroad, and a very strong sorrow that it was necessary. On Memorial Day, we thank them.

Comments

For Memorial Day — 26 Comments

  1. This is about the saddest song I have ever heard. I can’t get past the line “So lay me down…” without many tears. It’s so deeply true and tragic.

  2. We so often think about numbers and names, but this takes you to the hearts of the individuals. Tears here too.

  4. Memorial Day was still called Decoration Day by my grandparents’ generation when I was a little kid. For my maternal grandmother, “the war” was the Civil War, not WWII, because both of her grandfathers had served in the Army of the Potomac, and Decoration Day originated as a way of honoring the soldiers and sailors of both sides who died in that tragic conflict. It was not officially renamed “Memorial Day” until 1967.

    I was surprised to learn that the last verified veterans of the Civil War lived into the 1950s– my early years– the last Confederate veteran living until 1951 and the last Union veteran until 1956. My grandmother used to sing a Civil War song called “Tenting Tonight,” which was written in 1863, halfway through the war, when no one knew when or how it would end. “Tenting Tonight” was written by a man from Massachusetts named Walter Kittredge, but it was sung by soldiers on both sides. The last stanza and final chorus express the pain and sorrow of the then-unending war; one commenter on YouTube calls it “one of the very first anti-war songs ever written!”

    We’ve been fighting today on the old camp ground,
    Many are lying near;
    Some are dead, and some are dying,
    Many are in tears.

    Final Chorus:
    Many are the hearts that are weary tonight,
    Wishing for the war to cease;
    Many are the hearts looking for the right,
    To see the dawn of peace.
    Dying tonight, dying tonight,
    Dying on the old camp ground.

    Here is “Tenting Tonight”– I don’t know who the singer is, but her voice adds to the haunting quality of Kittredge’s song.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI67rO2zdC4&ab_channel=IanBerwick

  5. For me this day is a day to especially remember the men I served with who didn’t make it home. Forever young in my mind, it was a privilege to have known and served with them. We owe so much to such warriors and the families who lost their precious loved ones. It’s sad and yet it reminds us that freedom is not free. On this day of remembrance, let us all pledge to continue the fight for freedom in honor of their sacrifices.

  6. PA+CAT that was used in Ken Burns Civil War series and didn’t know title until now
    Thanks

  8. A couple of months ago, Neo had a post on genealogy. Several commenters related stories about their American Civil War family members. I knew from a written family history that a couple of relations had been killed in the war, but details were sparse.

    The history is about the descendants of David and Laura. David was born in 1795 in Canada to German loyalists from Pennsylvania. Laura was born in 1805 in Vermont to an English mother and Scots father. David and Laura had 12 children, three of whom died as infants and all others reaching adulthood. I am descended from #12. The family history is pretty accurate with respect to #12 because he was in Custer’s 7th Cavalry and at the Little Big Horn. His military career and post military life are well documented in several books I have.

    Not much was known about two civil war fatalities from the history. Laura, who died in 1862, had an epitaph added in the 1880s to her tomb stone stating her sons David killed at Chancellorsville at age 20 and Edgar was killed at the Wilderness. David was listed a child #6 and Edgar #8 with a brother who died as an infant between them.

    Edgar left a wife and child. I thought Edgar must have been only 18 or 19 if David fell in 1863 at 20 and Edgar fell in 1864. I wondered if Edgar was with David when he fell. As young as they both were, I wondered if they had been in many battles.

    Thanks to the internet, I was able to track down their military records. There was lots wrong with the story as I knew it. Turns out Edgar was the older brother and was probably at almost every important battle in the east until his death. David on the other hand was killed in his first battle. Edgar was probably about 10 miles away at the time.

    Edgar William b. c.1834. Enrolled at age 27 on 9/3/61 West Haven VT. Mustered into Federal service 9/16/61 as part of Company B, 5th Vermont Infantry. POW Savage’s Station 6/29/62. Paroled 7/27/62. Mortally wounded in action 5/10/64 at the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse as part of the Sixth Army Corps (Wright). Died the next day.

    During his enlistment, the regiment was in the following engagements:
    Defense of Washington December 1861 – April 1862
    Siege of Yorktown April 5 – May 4, 1862
    Battle of Williamsburg May 5, 1862
    Battle of Garnett’s & Golding’s Farm June 26, 1862
    Battle of Savage’s Station June 29, 1862
    Battle of White Oak Swamp June 30, 1862
    Battle of Crampton’s Gap September 14, 1862
    Battle of Antietam September 17, 1862
    Battle of Fredericksburg December 13, 1862
    Battle of Marye’s Heights May 3, 1863
    Battle of Salem Church May 4, 1863
    Second Battle of Fredericksburg June 5, 1863
    Battle of Gettysburg July 3, 1863
    Battle of Funkstown July 10, 1863
    Battle of Rappahannock Station November 7, 1863
    Battle of the Wilderness May 5–10, 1864
    Battle of Spotsylvania May 10–18, 1864

    David Henry b. c.1837. Enrolled at age 25 8/9/1862 at Whitehall New York, mustered into Federal Service 9/4/1862 as part of Company C, 123rd New York. Killed 5/3/1863 in the first major fight of the regiment on the 3rd day of the Battle of Chancellorsville as part of the Twelfth Corps (Slocum).

  10. Neo, I had a similar reaction the first time I heard “The Vacant Chair,” as sung by Kathy Matea, and featured on Ken Burns’ “The Civil War.”

    The lyrics, originally a poem written during the Civil War to commemorate a fallen Union soldier, are almost unbearably moving.

    https://youtu.be/wXtjE9KaMYI

  12. No greater sacrifice. No greater grief than those who have lost their loved one.

    Xylourgos,

    To equate, even in the least, the deaths of those who died seeking to impose a genocidal tyranny with those who died fighting for freedom is an obscenity.

  13. Michael
    Sometime before Burns’ work, Mattea did a selection of songs from the Civil War. Empty Chair was one. Each was a killer.
    If I feel like…. I don’t know what….I might try to find it. Maybe not.
    As a proportion of our population, the Civil War dead today would be about nine million. The Second World War proportion today would be one million.
    Kid’s books of the Twenties had the maiden aunt as a stock figure. For a reason.

  14. Geoffrey Britain–

    I’m glad you took Xylourgos to task, because I’ve had smoke boiling out of my ears ever since I clicked on the link in his post. My dad was a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge as well as D-Day, and could not talk about a place called Malmedy without choking up. Xylourgos probably knows nothing of another hamlet in Belgium called Wereth, where the SS murdered a group of 11 black GIs taken prisoner during the Bulge after first torturing them (including castration). For the SS, the presence of black soldiers in the U.S. Army was just one more proof that the United States is a mongrel nation inferior to the Herrenvolk, and they were always particularly cruel to black POWs.

    As they were to Jewish GIs. My dad told me that Jewish soldiers sent to the European Theater had the option to leave the “religion” field on their dog tags blank or to use “P” for Protestant if they were concerned about falling into German hands. (There were three options in WWII: “C” for Catholic, “H” for Hebrew, and “P” for Protestant.) He was pretty sure that most of his Jewish comrades kept the “H” on their dog tags.

    FWIW, my dad could hardly have had any animus against Germans as such because he (as do I) had an echt German surname. Both sides of my family are ethnic German-American, with the exception of an English lawyer who snuck in on my dad’s side a few generations back. And my two great-great-grandfathers who fought in the Civil War belonged to a German-speaking Pennsylvania regiment. Xylourgos just doesn’t “get” America’s Memorial Day at all.

    Thank you to Neo as well as to you for letting me vent.

  16. Chases Eagles: that’s quite a battle record. It reminded me of a Civil War poem by Robert Frost, set in the part of New England where your ancestors were from: “The Black Cottage”, available here:

    https://www.bartleby.com/118/7.html

    If you haven’t already, check out Ralph Peters’ recent Civil War novels.

    PA+Cat: “Verstaubt sind die Gesichter” (“Dusty Are Their Faces”) is a line from the “Panzerlied”, the song of the Nazi tank corps:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzerlied

    In full performance here, if you’re so inclined:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AvpVRA1PaM

    The SOBs did have good songs.

    I’m in Massachusetts this week. Bought a small American flag today for my father’s gravestone (USAAF, 20th Air Force, 1943-1946) in the Jewish community cemetery here. Found out that’s against the rules now: no flags (service plaques are permitted, however). My parents were among the founders of the Jewish community in this town. Wonder what they’d think of that rule. Scratch that: I know what they’d think of it. It has become a very progressive congregation. Lots of academics–new-style academics. I grew up among old-style academics. Many of the senior professors who taught me in the 1970s were WWII vets. So were many members of the congregation. All gone now.

    My dad’s dog tags have “H” for “Hebrew”. He wanted to be sent to the European theater. Instead, he was sent to the Pacific.

  17. PA+Cat,

    It demanded a response. Nor do I have anything against the German people per se. It’s the Nazi mentality of course that I find offensive. As we’ve sadly learned to our regret, that mentality infests mankind. No society is immune from that virus.

  18. To GB, PA+Cat and the others who were offended by my offensive and ill-timed reference to the link I provided I do sincerely apologize. There is no way I meant to compare the actions of German soldiers to that of American GIs during WWII. The ultimate tragedy for Germany was that there were good boys fighting for an incredibly evil cause. My father flew over the sky of Germany with the RCAF. He was no NAZI sympathizer, and neither am I. Once again, sincere apologies for any offence taken.

  21. There is a very good 1982 German movie about the White Rose group, titled simply ‘The White Rose’. The 2005 American movie ‘Sophie Scholl” is also pretty good, but the 1982 film is in a class by itself.

    Not readily available, but sometimes shows up in VHS form on Ebay.

  24. @ David Foster – thanks for the link to your article.
    As one of the commenters noted (in 2013!), referring to the situation in the USA specifically then, but I would extend certainly to Canada, Australia-NZ, and parts of Europe – How is this different from today?

    The German dissidents of WW2 were a special study of mine some years ago.
    Of course, as the saying goes, “One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.”
    When the full atrocities of the Nazis were disclosed, The White Rose group and the others of their ilk were rightly placed in the freedom fighter category.
    If Hitler had won, that would be different.

    Now, many people cast BLM, AntiFa, and (sad to say) most of the Democrat leadership as the freedom fighters, when to our view (which I believe to be correct) they are the domestic terrorists that AG Garland should be arresting.

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