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Honor the dead who fought for freedom

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Contributed by: Jack Van Ens on 5/15/2008

Death stalked me on Memorial Day two years ago. It looked me in the eye. I couldn't deflect its stare. I faced death and didn't run away from it.

My bucket list of travels to pursue before my final rest included observing Memorial Day in Washington, DC, which my wife and I achieved two years ago. Milling with patriotic crowds on the Mall, we visited the imposing World War II Memorial. Dressed in military uniforms worn from the Revolutionary War through the First Gulf War, soldiers honored past comrades. Standing smartly at attention, these sentinels in period military costumes helped us face death as we honored the over 400,000 who fell in combat.

We followed a motley dressed Honor Guard of veterans who held high Old Glory as they processed to the Vietnam Memorial. They wore sweat-stained bandanas, tie-died shirts, and faded jeans. These sons of the turbulent 1960s attired themselves in frayed clothes, indicative of our wasted society in the 1960s divided over the Vietnam War. Etched in ebony marble are names of my second cousin, John Dekker, and a high school chum, Ron Vandenberg. We honored their memory, as taps blew across the Mall.

The Bush Administration denies our citizens its honorable duty to face death in war. Those who favor the war in Iraq order us to strike our tents and move far from feeling death's effects. They want us to invest in an antiseptic war, where carnage isn't viewed close-up. When flag draped coffins arrive at Andrews Air force base, they are hidden from public view, lest newspapers print pictures of them. It's bad for the national psyche to dwell on death, we are told.

We don't honor the dead, do we, by pretending that they don't come home in shrouds? To avoid death is to dishonor it.

Editor's note: Jack R. Van Ens is a historian and dramatistwho protrays Thomas Jefferson andcolonial minister Jonathan Edwards. Browse hisWeb site at www.thelivinghistory.com ore-mail him at vanensfam@juno.com.

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