You’ve got two opportunities this month to honor the men and women of the United States Armed Forces, those few who sacrifice so much for so many. The first opportunity is Armed Forces Day, May 19. The second is Memorial Day, May 28.
Parades are important. So too are public commemorations. But from this combat veteran’s perspective a few minutes of quiet contemplation are what matters most – that those who serve be part of our collective, continuing consciousness and not relegated to afterthought. Here are three places that contemplation is keenest:
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Few memorials in our nation’s capital pack the impact of The Wall. Families of the fallen gather there to run their fingers across the sharply-etched names, to array flowers along its 58,271-name expanse. Some of those names I served with, in a place called the Au Shau Valley. The Wall is a place of quiet remembrance, where visitors speak in hushed tones and the sounds of the city subside.
Not that far from Washington, DC, in a rolling patch of southern Pennsylvania, lies the battlefield on which the fate of a nation pivoted. It was at Gettysburg, during the first few days of July 1863, that brothers battled and shaped the nation what we’ve become. 51,000 fell. To this reporter’s mind, Gettysburg remains the one single National Military Park every American should see. The park is expansive. Plan to stay a day.
The new Pearl Harbor Visitors Center is extraordinary, a museum housed in a series of structures fronting the remarkably small anchorage itself. The center is powerfully interpretive. It explains what led up to the attack through words, and photographs and artifacts. When you’ve finished, journey by boat to the USS Arizona memorial just across the water. She, and her crew, bore the brunt of the attack that day. 1,177 of her men died. Their names are engraved on a marble wall so that we might never forget what happened here.
Story by Jerry Chandler
(Image: *Micky)
