Memorial Day, and a "Grateful Nation Remembers;" Really? – What Bullshit!

“'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
“Was there a man dismay'd ?
“Not tho' the soldier knew
“Some one had blunder'd:
“Theirs not to make reply,
“Theirs not to reason why,
“Theirs but to do and die,
“Into the valley of Death
“Rode the six hundred.

“Cannon to right of them,
“Cannon to left of them,
“Cannon in front of them
“Volley'd and thunder'd;
“Storm'd at with shot and shell,
“Boldly they rode and well,
“Into the jaws of Death,
“Into the mouth of Hell
“Rode the six hundred.

“When can their glory fade?
“O the wild charge they made!
“All the world wonder'd.
“Honour the charge they made!
“Honour the Light Brigade,
“Noble six hundred!”

That, of course, is an excerpt from the famed poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson commemorating the famed Charge of the Light Brigade in the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. Anyone who doesn’t see the parallel between the blundering, misguided, and disastrous charge and what is going on now in Iraq is either brain-dead or in an altered state produced by CIA and federal U.S. Government Operation Mockingbird propaganda, and of no use in either a discussion of the Iraq war or Memorial Day efforts to honor the men and women who have died for our country there and elsewhere.
The phrase, “Theirs but to do and die" has made Lord Cardigan’s charge a symbol of warfare at its most courageous, its most tragic, and its most stupid. It is also my answer to the “Did Not Serve,” FoxNews patriot who chooses to further the purposes of the corporate dictatorship he sucks up to by pretending that anyone who sees the war in Iraq as anything but another idiotic Charge of the Light Brigade ordered by a latter-day Lord Cardigan is somehow a traitor.
I was a soldier. I was a soldier and I know the truth about the relationship between the rich and politically powerful – in a capitalist society, let us not forget, they are the same – and the soldier. I know, too, what Memorial Day remembrances held by those same rich and powerful – who “did not serve” – are worth. I know what they are about, too.
The Bill O’Reillys, the Sean Hannitys, the Britt Humes, and the like are not honoring – not even encouraging – those who stand on a wall and remain awake while those whom they love sleep. History has recorded faithfully the names of men like the Leonidas at Thermopylae, Byrhtnoth at Waldron, and Horatius at the bridge in Rome. Protectors, those men stood between those they loved and their enemies. All left history a record like the legendary missive of the Spartan to his people. “Stranger, go and tell Sparta that we lie here in obedience to her command.”
“Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die,” in other words.

While still a kid in high school and obliged by the Catholic grandparents’ rearing me to attend church every Sunday, I marveled at the way parishioners’ hour-or- two long piety turned quickly to the very behavior their services condemned. Walking into the church sacristy one evening to find the priestly pastor of the church mounted on a lady parishioner, I recollected as I beat a hasty retreat both the “sins of the flesh” sermon the priest had delivered the Sunday before and the angelic expression on the woman’s face that same day as she returned to her pew from the communion railing.

Daily, now, I listen to the same tone and tenor, the same fervor as Sean Hannity excoriates “traitors” who “undermine the morale of our men and women in Iraq.” I’m listening to it as I type this, in the voice of President George W. Bush as he “honors our men and women in uniform” on this Memorial Day.

And, of course, I listen as “a grateful nation remembers,” 2007.

I listen and I remember landing in Keflavik, Iceland, en route to the “Z.I.” – the United States - and listening as Armed Forces Radio recapped the 1956 World Series I had missed during the time I spent in infiltrating “Communist” – then, all socialist countries automatically devolved immediately into communism – Hungary in order to possibly rescue revolt leaders like Pal Maleter. It was just before Christmas, and as anxious as I was to get home, something about the broadcast relates here. A few weeks before, in a firefight I was still dealing with in my mind, I had not only brought to fruition years of self-imposed physical training the like of which no military on this planet can boast, I had killed in lethal combat three men in literally less than seconds.

As I would relate decades later in an autobiographical work, all three of the men that night were killed and were dead before the body of the first stuck by the big slugs from my .45 caliber pistol had fallen to the ground. It was one hell of a feat, one the teenage Hungarian girl being raped by the soldiers probably never forgot. In my personal de-briefing of the incident in preparation for the military one I knew was coming, I was feeling pretty good about myself. Until, that is, the newspaper or magazine I was reading made me realize.

Realize? Yeah, I realized that the nation that every year protests and postures as it does on this Memorial Day, 2007, was interested mostly in men named Don Larson, Mickey Mantle, Enos Slaughter, and Don Newcombe – the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball teams. Men who stood in a pass, on a bridge, or on a wall and defended with their lives the people and nation the pass, bridge, or wall led to were comparatively expendable, insignificant. They were, after all, cheaply bought and menial servants who did chores none of the celebrated would stoop to do.

A few weeks ago, in Building Eighteen at Walter Reed Army Hospital, I heard the echoes of my mind that day a few days before Christmas at St. Peters Church, in my home town, the same echoes I heard that day a short time before Christmas in 1956. Duty, so like morality of the priest that day in my home town, so like the interests and priorities of the public in the aftermath of the Hungarian Revolt, and so like the posturing of the cynical Operations Mockingbird media like FoxNews of today, is easily imposed by authority and the powerfully rich who own it – in a capitalist society, there is no other real possibility, as I’ve noted - on those who are poor and therefore politically weak.

You may have yourselves and your time fooled, “America,” but you haven’t fooled me and you haven’t fooled your soldiers.

The fact is that the economically dependent and the poor fight and die in wars enriching and empowering those already rich and in power, and Memorial Days are only more of the propaganda wielded by the powerful in order to keep full the ranks of those like the Spartans at the Thermopylae Pass, the Saxons at the Battle of Waldron, and Light Brigades at Balaclava. With only a few hours of newspaper, radio, and television time, a nation’s plutocrats purchase the mind, spirits, bodies, and limbs of the poor who are “commemorated.” On this Memorial Day, look up the word you will hear, and hypocritically use again and again – ad nauseam. “To commemorate” means only to keep in mind. Only, and once a year.

Obviously, on this Memorial Day, that is all – exactly all - it means.