Memorial
Day Address It is an honor for me to be with you today on these hallowed grounds, our national memorial to prisoners of war, the final resting place of nearly thirteen thousand soldiers. It is also fitting that we come together while America is at war and only one day following the dedication of our National Memorial to World War II veterans. I wrote the following words for a Memorial Day Address I gave in 2002. I wrote them on a Sunday morning. I wrote them just days after being found by some friends I served with in combat, friends I had not spoken with in over thirty years, friends who brought back a flood of memories. For me these words reflect the essence of Memorial Day and I would like to share them with you. Each and every Memorial Day, I thank someone who isn’t here. All Americans should do that on Memorial Day - thank someone who isn’t here, someone no longer with us, someone who died too young, too soon, stealing happiness from their loved ones, someone who died in combat in sacrifice for our country, for their community, for their beliefs. Some Americans, thankfully just a few, some here today, will recall and thank someone in particular who died in combat, someone who died in their presence, perhaps even someone who saved their life. For me, if I recall no one else specifically on Memorial Day, I remember and thank Private First Class Michael Alan Bosowski, Catholic, single, born March 1, 1948 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, killed in combat on February 15, 1970, Quang Ngai Province, Vietnam. In a very real sense, I have Private Bosowski to thank for the honor today of giving this address. We called him BZ. He could have run away from that grenade, the one I didn’t see, the one that landed at my feet. Instead he screamed a warning, picked it up, tried to throw it away. I only took some shrapnel. BZ died saving my life. I’m here today. BZ is not here today. BZ is among those we come today to honor, to thank, to recall. We are now in the midst of our first war of the new millennium, a different kind of war than those we have known in the past, a war against terrorism. For many Americans, this war began with an horrendous attack on our own soil witnessed by virtually all of us on live television, an attack that will never fade from our collective memory, a 911 wake up call that took the lives of 3000 innocent civilians, military personnel and public safety officers, a salvo not unlike Pearl Harbor, an event that has once again, and inevitably, forced us to place tens of thousands of American troops in harm’s way. Since 911, hundreds of additional military and civilian personnel have lost their lives in Iraq and Afganistan. Their recent sacrifice, combined with the 911 loss of so many lives on American soil, lends special meaning to this Memorial Day. In recent years, most Americans did not share a personal memory of combat, of the bravery and sacrifice that so many, like my fallen friend BZ, have shown and given to our country. That has changed. Now all Americans share the searing images and memories of 911 as it unfolded in our living rooms. And we daily see and read the toll of American lives sacrificed in Iraq and Afghanistan on our behalf, fighting an elusive enemy, an enemy that poses the greatest threat to America since World War II. My father, my grandfather and all of my uncles fought in World War II. Of course I have no personal memories of that conflict, but I was truly moved by the opening and closing scenes of the movie Saving Private Ryan. Saving Private Ryan begins with an elderly World War II veteran, accompanied by his children and grandchildren, visiting an American gravesite in Normandy. The old veteran is Private Ryan, and surrounded by his family, he weeps as his memories overwhelm him. The movie then shifts to the extreme violence and death at Omaha Beach, and I’m certain many of you who saw the movie were just as startled as I was by how realistic the passing bullets sounded. I hadn’t heard that sound in years and had never heard it in a movie. Once the beachhead is secured, the main character in the movie, a former English teacher now a grunt lieutenant played by Tom Hanks, is placed in charge of a small party detailed to find and save Private Ryan. Each of Ryan’s brothers had been killed in combat and our nation would not ask that one family bear the cost of losing all of its sons. At this point in the movie, I thought of my mother’s mother, my grandmother, who lost her only son, my Uncle Billy, to combat in World War II. And I also thought of my father, an only son who was wounded but survived. Virtually everyone assigned to the detail in Saving Private Ryan, dies saving Ryan, including the lieutenant. With the exception of the bullet sounds, pretty standard stuff for a Hollywood war movie. Not particularly memorable - except for the dying lieutenant’s last words to Ryan: “Earn this.” I then understood the opening scene and the old man’s tears. And I longed to know whether that old man, whether his children, whether his grandchildren, all of whom owed their very existence to the men of that detail, just as I owe mine to BZ, whether they, in the conduct of their lives, “earned this.” We, every one of us who enjoys the freedom and wealth of this country, we are that old man, those children and grandchildren. Each and every one of us, directly like Private Ryan or indirectly like the children, owe either our lives or our well being to a long line of American men and women, now numbering more than one million, who gave their lives in defense of their country or their community. Today, a day of remembrance for their sacrifice, it behooves each and every one of us to weep and to ask: “Have we earned this?” Do we, in the daily conduct of our lives, deserve the sacrifice made by those not here with us, those we honor and thank today? “Have we earned this?” Each of us must answer that question in
our own way. The men and women we honor today showed “no greater
love.” So I believe we can at least love our neighbors and
accept, even cherish, sacrificing for the sake of others, even total
strangers. To me, “earning this” means bearing sacrifices
and inconveniences for the good of the whole, for our families,
our communities, our nation, for strangers throughout the world,
knowing that these sacrifices and inconveniences pale in comparison
to the ultimate sacrifice made by those we remember and honor today.
More concretely, I believe “earning this” means meeting
our moral commitment to our surviving veterans and giving total
respect, total support and total honor to those now in harm’s
way in service to our nation and the world. “If I can help somebody as I pass
along, The lives of those we honor today were not lived in vain. They were given to help many others. The English philosopher and political scientist John Stuart Mill wrote long ago “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling, [a belief that] nothing is worth war, is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free. . .” These courageous men and women we honor here today, each so different in heritage and background, shared Mill’s belief that freedom is worth the fight and does not come without cost. They sacrificed personal comfort, safety and ultimately their lives in response to duty, honor, country, for the sake of an ideal. Let me end by sharing with you an updated version of the last verse of an old, old song from central Europe:
Thank you for sharing your time today in honor of these special Americans who are content even if we forget them. They are not here to receive our thanks. Let us earn their sacrifice in our daily lives, a sacrifice we can never fully repay. Let’s earn this. God bless you all.
|
