Lest we forget

Since today (Monday, May 26 -- yesterday if you're in Australia) is Memorial Day in the United States, I choose to use my blog to honor two young men whose names appear on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.

The first, Captain Edward Wilson Griffith (1941-1969) , was the brother of my blogger friend Pat - An Arkansas Stamper.

The second, First Lieutenant Edwin Steven Brague, Jr. (1943-1967) , shares my surname but I have not yet determined the relationship, if any, between us.

Since Brague is not a common surname, I used to think that everyone named Brague must be related. But after I discovered that Brague is the name of a river in France, I have come to believe that perhaps the Bragues of today share a common area of origin geographically but are not necessarily related. I intend to keep investigating.

Twenty-eight-year-old Captain Griffith (Panel W25, line 48) was from Jacksonville, Arkansas. He died on May 11, 1969 during hostile ground fighting in Kontum Province, South Vietnam. His body was recovered and is interred at Little Rock National Cemetery in Arkansas.

Twenty-three-year-old Lieutenant Brague (Panel 13E, Line 120) was from Ridgewood, New Jersey. He was the pilot of a helicopter that crashed during hostilities in Quang Tin, South Vietnam, on January 7, 1967. His body was recovered also and is interred in Pennsylvania.

These are but two of the 58,272 names inscribed on the wall as of 2011. Today Americans also remember the fallen of other wars in our nation’s history. The major conflicts were:

American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) : 25,000
War of 1812 (1812-1815) : 20,000
Mexican-American War (1846-1848) : 13,283
Civil War (1861-1865) : 625,000
Spanish-American War (1898) : 2,446
Philippine-American War (1898-1913) : 4,196
World War I (1917-1918) : 116,516
World War II (1941-1945) : 405,399
Korean War (1950-1953) : 36,516
Vietnam War (1955-1975) : 58,209
Afghanistan (2001- ) : 3,441 as of May 24, 2014
Iraq (2003-2012) : 4,804

Sources: U.S. Army Military History Institute; iCasualties.org; Wikipedia

Click here to see Captain Griffith’s grave in the national cemetery in Little Rock (photo by his sister, our good friend Pat).

Finally, click here to read a good Memorial Day post by another cyberfriend, Michael Burns of Carlsbad, California (our good friend Reamus).

Everyone who plans to concentrate on boats, barbecue, or baseball today should read it.

America! America! God shed His grace on thee...

The photographs on Ree Drummond’s post yesterday say it all.

A different kind of Memorial Day tribute.

My backyard neighbors -- not the ones in their eighties -- have decided to shoot off fireworks this Memorial Day evening. They mean well, I suppose, but it seems a little bizarre to be celebrating the deaths of American military men and women with fireworks as though it were the 4th of July.

But since the ice has been broken, so to speak, my Memorial Day post this year will be in honor of all the children who played soldier and grew up to fight real enemies, some in the flesh, some in the spiritual realm. Wickedness in high places takes many forms. And the battle still rages.

Here, from years ago, is one of my all-time favorite songs by the Christian trio known as the Sharrett Brothers. You may not know it, but after hearing it you will not soon forget it.

"Soldiers Again" (6:32) by the Sharrett Brothers, when it was still a work in progress back in their college days. The best acoustics around were apparently in their dormitory’s showers.

In case you had trouble understanding the lyrics, here they are:

Backyard soldiers, little boys,
We fought the enemy with little toys.
Sticks for swords, hands for guns,
Every battle always won.

But as we grew and went our way
We forgot about our soldier days.
No more swords, no more guns,
No more battles to be won.

But we were wrong.
We did not see we still had an enemy.
So now we stand, Friend with friend,
We are soldiers once again.

We are soldiers again
In the army of the Lord.
We are soldiers again
And His Word is our sword.
We will not be denied; with Him by our side
We know the victory we’ll win.
We will fight till the end,
Soldiers again.

And we still can’t even see the one we are fighting,
But we stand with One who can, the Lord God Almighty.

We are soldiers again
In the army of the Lord.
We are soldiers again
And His Word is our sword.
We will not be denied; with Him by our side
We know the victory we’ll win.
We will fight till the end,
Soldiers again.

We will not be denied; with Him by our side
We know the victory we’ll win.
We will fight till the end,
Soldiers again.

Memorial Day weekend

Along with all the trips to the beach and the going to baseball games and the having backyard cookouts, take a little time to remember the brave men and women who made our freedom possible:

This photograph was made at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. I read the other day that there are 123 national cemeteries in the United States. My Memorial Day post from two years ago shows one in Arkansas, courtesy of Pat -- an Arkansas photographer.

Memorial Day has come and gone...

but we continue to remember. I saw two images this week that I wanted to share with you. This photo was taken last Monday by my new blogger friend, Pat, at the national cemetery in Little Rock, Arkansas, where her brother, who died at 28 in Vietnam, is buried. The expanse of headstones reminded me of Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., where I once witnessed the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns. The photo also reminds me that thousands and thousands of people have given their lives in the defense of our country and to preserve our liberties, our freedoms, our way of life. I don’t know how many graves are in the Little Rock cemetery, but Arlington has over 250,000 according to one source.

And this photo of red poppies
growing in a field in France is also a poignant reminder to those of a certain age of our American war dead. It was taken by another new blogger friend, Papy Biou, who lives in France. When I was young, the American Legion or the Veterans of Foreign Wars sold red paper poppies every Armistice Day (November 11th) and Memorial Day (May 30th) to raise funds for their organizations. People wore them in their lapels in remembrance of our fallen heroes of both World War I and II. Last November on Veterans Day, I wrote about the end of World War I in a post entitled, “In Flanders Fields” and included the famous poem that begins, “In Flanders Fields the poppies blow/ between the crosses, row on row.” Whenever I see red poppies, and these captured by Papy are beautiful, I always think of that poem, and the reason it was written, and the American cemeteries in France as a result of the two World Wars.

To date, more than 4,000 Americans have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. Over 58,000 names are engraved on the low black wall called the Vietnam Memorial. Over 54,000 died during the Korean conflict, over 408,000 in World War II, over 116,000 in World War I, over 25,000 in the American Revolutionary War. Most heartbreaking of all are the figures for the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 until 1865, because Americans were killing Americans. At a time when our nation’s population was around 31,000,000 people (a tenth of what it is now), the combined dead of the War Between The States is estimated at 562,000. And, lest we forget, thousands more have given their lives over the past 233 years in what are now considered minor wars and skirmishes.

Let us resolve, with Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, “that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

We remember them. Better late than never.