What is a society without a heroic dimension? Jean Baudrillard

Happy Memorial Day.

Today we remember – and we honor – the sacrifices of our soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and guardsmen, sacrifices made to keep us free and to free the victims of tyranny around the world.

I can’t think of this day without thinking of my grandfather, an American G.I. who was wounded in Nancy, France during the big push to Berlin in World War II;

I can’t think of this day without seeing – and feeling – the military cemetery of Normandy in France, the military cemetery of Flanders Fields in Belgium, and so many other cemeteries across Europe.  These are such powerful and moving places to experience.

I can’t think of this day without remembering the dozens and dozens of French and Belgians who, during our family’s many years living in those two countries, thanked me for the American soldiers who came to Europe to liberate them from tyranny:

A neighbor whose husband had been captured and tortured to death in a Nazi concentration camp; her story still brings tears to my eyes;

A neighbor whose family took in and cared for wounded American GIs during the Battle of the Bulge;

A friend who watched helplessly as his family farm was bombed and destroyed by the German army;

A neighbor who had been a soldier in the Belgian army at the outbreak of the war and suffered the pain of national surrender in the face of the blitzkrieg attacks of German military might;

The 18-year old French girl in the city of Chartres who asked me why we would come and die to set her nation free; her simple and sincere “thank you” still rings in my ears, and in my heart.

On and on I could tell the stories of the French and the Belgians who thanked me for the sacrifices of the American G.I. in Europe, not once, but twice in the last century.

They couldn’t thank the soldiers who had come to fight and then, at the end of the war, returned to America. And they certainly couldn’t thank the tens of thousands of American dead who now silently lay in the countless military cemeteries – great and small – across Europe – soldiers who had fought and died to free the people of Europe from occupation, tyranny, torture and death.

And so, they thanked the only American they could thank.  They thanked me.

And they mark the day. They honor the memory of the soldiers who gave their lives for their freedom.

Just as we do today.

A happy, restful, and thankful Memorial Day to you.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. Winston Churchill