Memorial Day 2024

This is my eighteenth consecutive Memorial Day message. You can find the previous seventeen at the end of this message.

Foremost, on this Memorial Day, as always, we remember and honor all those servicemen and women who paid the ultimate price in America's wars. And we remember and honor their families too.

In less than two weeks, on June 6, we will commemorate the 80^th anniversary of D-Day, the day when some 156,000 American, British, and Canadian forces landed on Omaha Beach and four others along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. The invasion, one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history, was the beginning of the end of World War II.

About 2500 Americans died in the invasion on June 6 alone.

So, on this Memorial Day, with the milestone D-Day anniversary fast approaching, below you will find some quotes – some from leaders of the invasion and some from ordinary soldiers – that I hope will encourage contemplation regarding Memorial Day and what it means for America.

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“If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.” — General Dwight Eisenhower.

“Two kinds of people are staying on this beach—the dead and those who are going to die.” — Colonel George A. Taylor, commanding the Sixteenth Infantry Regiment, First Infantry Division, on Omaha Beach.

“These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.” — President Ronald Reagan, on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day.

“I don't feel that I’m any kind of hero. To me, the work had to be done. I was asked to do it. So, I did. When I lecture kids, I tell them the same thing.” — Private First Class Joseph Lesniewski​, Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division.

“This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.” Elmer Davis.

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Every Memorial Day provides an opportunity for contemplative reflection regarding the sacrifice of those who gave, as Lincoln put it at Gettysburg, “the last full measure of devotion.” This is true also of commemorations of anniversaries like D-Day.

Finally, this from Ronald Reagan in his Farewell Address to the American people on January 12, 1989: "If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. I am warning of an eradication of that – of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit."

For the sake of American memory, and the preservation of the spirit that has kept America a beacon of liberty and freedom, remember the sacrifice that our country's fallen paid with their lives.

My very best wishes to you and your family for a safe and meaningful Memorial Day.

PS – My past Memorial Day messages are here: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007.

Independence Day 2019

I wrote this Independence Day message on June 9, two days after visiting Pointe du Hoc, Omaha Beach, and the American Cemetery and Memorial in France. I have had it in the "pending" file since then.

My visit to Normandy occurred one day after the 75^th anniversary of Operation Overlord, the D-Day invasion of Allied Forces that began the effort to finally defeat the Nazi regime in France.

Pointe du Hoc is where, on D-Day, American soldiers used rope ladders to scale 100-foot cliffs to disarm suspected German artillery that would have fired on the soldiers landing on Omaha Beach. On Omaha Beach alone, U.S. forces suffered around 2000 casualties. The American Cemetery is the final resting place of more than 9200 American soldiers, including 45 pairs of brothers.

Had Operation Overload not been successful – and if America had not led the allies in going on to defeat Germany – America almost certainly would be a far different place than it is today. It is highly unlikely that we would be celebrating "Independence Day" and recalling the words of the Declaration of Independence in the same way we do today.

As I was walking on the now-pristine sands of Omaha Beach and then among the endless rows of simple white marble crosses and Stars of David at the America cemetery, I couldn't help but recall the words of those who, either without understanding or lacking seriousness of purpose, wonder aloud about America's greatness.

There are too many naysayers, of course.

But take these two examples. In March 2019, former Attorney General Eric Holder asked: "Exactly when did you think America was great?" New York Governor Andrew Cuomo suggested in August 2018 that America "was never that great."

They should be ashamed. They should know better.

Do Eric Holder and Andrew Cuomo not think America was great on June 6, 1944, and in the succeeding days when it led the Allies in launching the most successful land invasion in history? If not, it is a travesty to all those young men who gave their lives on the Normandy beaches in the cause of defeating Nazism.

America was great then. And on countless occasions before and after.

To be sure, America has not always lived up to its ideals – the Declaration's self-evident truth that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Slavery and Jim Crow will forever be deep-seated moral stains in the fabric of the American story. They are examples – and there are others too – of America falling short of its aspirations.

But falling short of the Declaration's aspirations is not the same as forever forfeiting the claim to America's greatness.

If you doubt, I urge you, on the miles of narrow roads approaching the Normandy beaches, to witness the hundreds of American flags draped from the homes along the way. And the hundreds of posters with the faces of American heroes hanging from every pole.

So, I maintain that, on the whole, those brave American soldiers that spilled out of the landing crafts onto Omaha Beach in 1944 – including those resting forever under the white marble stones – believed they were fighting to preserve individual freedom and America's independence.

If Eric Holder, Andrew Cuomo, or anyone else ever asks you: "Exactly when did you think America was great?" just say, please go to Pointe du Hoc, Omaha Beach, and the American Cemetery and Memorial.

That's something to keep in mind this Independence Day.

PS - My previous Independence Day messages are here: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015,  2016, 2017, and 2018.

Memorial Day 2014

Since I founded the Free State Foundation in 2006, this is the seventh Memorial Day message I’ve written. You can find links to the others at the end. More than most others, this is a bit more personal.

I want to relate two different stories from two different times – but both in the spirit of honor and remembrance on Memorial Day.

First. From 1969 – 1975, I served in the U. S. Army Reserve as a medical corpsman. After completing basic training at Fort Polk and medical corpsman training at Fort Sam Houston, aside from two weeks on duty each summer, for five and a half years I spent one weekend a month on duty, first at Womack Army Hospital at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and then at Walter Reed Army Hospital in D.C. About 75% of this hospital time, especially during the first three years, consisted of cleaning and dressing all manner of wounds suffered by soldiers returning from Vietnam.

I don’t want to suggest, of course, that you need to have had this personal experience to be very troubled by the reported doctored records and delays at the Veterans Administration hospitals. But having personally seen so many soldiers returning from battle maimed, I want to say here, on Memorial Day, that whatever problems exist in the VA hospital system – and they seem serious – need to be fixed, and as quickly as possible. This should not be a partisan issue. It is rather a matter of a nation respecting and honoring the service of its veterans.

Second. My father served in the Army in WWII as a warrant officer in the 68^th Armored Infantry Battalion of the 14^th Armored Division of the Seventh Army. He was in charge of a transportation unit responsible for trucking supplies and food from behind the lines up to the front – and then bringing back the dead and wounded.

On the side of each of the trucks in my father’s unit was painted: "Norma I," "Norma II," "Norma III," "Norma IV," and so forth. Norma was my mother. She was 19 when she and my father got married a few months before he shipped out for Europe.

There is something important about the trucks named "Norma," and the men who drove the trucks. In 1997, when my father was 80 years old, he told me this story, as I related in a 1998 piece published in the Potomac Review:

Dad retuned to his suitcase and pulled out three photographic prints of his entire company, seventy-nine men in all. He pointed to a soldier next to him, a warrant officer named Norman Wemple, and in a voice with an almost imperceptible quiver, stated, “he got blown up by a direct hit in March 1945 while driving Norma II. Norman was one of my best buddies in our company and a damn good mechanic too.”

There was a sudden stillness in the room. A moment later, Dad spoke up: “I still think about how that could’ve been me instead of Norman. I was driving Norma I about fifteen yards right in front of his truck on the day he got hit, but sometimes Norman drove first and I followed him, it just depended.”

“Depended on what?”

“Depended on who got his truck started first,” Dad said.

That was what happened one day in March 1945, but it was a day just like many others in a long war in which over 400,000 Americans gave their lives in the cause of fighting tyranny. Within a month, the war in Europe finally was over. My father arrived back in the States in July 1945.

For Norman Wemple, and for all the others like him who have sacrificed their lives throughout our history in the service of our country, and for all those who have returned wounded in body or spirit, please remember and honor them this Memorial Day.

PS. Now, last. June 6 marks the 70^th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. I recently had the privilege of viewing a screening of the remarkable new movie, “D-Day Normandy 1944,” written and directed by Pascal Vuong and narrated by Tom Brokaw. You can view the trailer here. The number of surviving WWII vets is diminishing rapidly – they are dying at a rate of about 555 a day. So each new generation of Americans must be educated anew regarding the meaning of June 6, 1944, a day that Mr. Brokaw said could easily be called, “the day that saved the world.” I recommend viewing the film as one part of such education and for the sake of remembering those who died that day.

PPS. My past Memorial Day messages are here: 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007.