MEMORIAL DAY

 It's a day for reflection, so I'm reflecting.

Too often I hear people saying to veterans and service men and women, "I'm grateful for your service."  Not me.  I just can't.

Our servicemen have my solemn respect and admiration, but gratitude is taking things just too far -- especially on a day when we honor our war dead.  I will never be grateful that they died.

Thing is most of our service men and women are kids, many joining up because they have nowhere else to go, or because they are fired up because of gung-ho patriotism.  Those who are career military are a different kettle of fish; most of those have joined because of a sincere desire to serve.

I think my basic problem comes from war.  I don't like it.  It's started and run by career politicians who don't really give a damn about our soldiers.  Wars are about which politician has the biggest genitalia, or about how much profit can be made, or who can amass the largest amount of brownie points from their base.  If you think the politicians care about young schoolgirls being slaughter in Iran, or about the thirteen service members who have been killed there or the more than 380 that have been wounded (both  n umbers, I believe have been greatly underestimated), or about the families that have been displaced in Gaza, or about the Ukrainians bombed out of their homes, or about the more than 1.2 million Russian casualties tossed callously into the furnace of war by Vladimir Putin, or about the victims of Boko Haram, Al-Quida, ISIS, drug cartels, the KKK and other homegrown racist organizations, the Taliban, MS-13, or any of the hundreds of other organizations that derive their power by invoking misery upon the innocent.  All of these groups, and many of the countries of the world, are led by small-minded men whose only purpose is power, often who managed to gull a group of useful idiots to support them.  When I rule the world, all of these leaders, and the quislings who support them either actively or by their silence, will be given guns and sent lot the front lines with orders to "Have at 'em. boys!"

The people who serve, the ;people who fight -- and I don't give a damn      what country they are from or what their religion is or what their sexual preferences are -- almost always just want to live in peace and provide for their families in safety and harmony.

So I don't like war and I don't like the people who start them.  I think serving your country is a noble thing, but to serve your country you should be serving its people and too often our service men and women are asked to do the opposite.  Our standing army should be ready to defend the country, but it also should be ready to provide logistics and aid when the people need it.  War should not be fought by blowing the enemy off the face of the Earth because by doing that you are harming many, many innocent people.  Wars need to be settled by diplomacy and reasoning.  There are times admittedly, that that is not possible, but that should be the primary goal.

I grew up in a fairly small town.  Only one member in my class was killed in Vietnam.  His name was Kenny Hughes.  i never hung out with him and did not know him very well although we worked together on a summer job.  Kenny was bright, popular, funny, and had a great future ahead of him.  That all of this was taken away in a foreign country during a war that he could not understand was, to me, the ultimate in evil.  Add to that a bit of guilt on my part because I never served despite having a low draft number -- an accident when I was three damaged my vision and I damaged my right hand in an accident  when I was seventeen and from then on would drop things without warning were the two things that kept me from the Army.  Those I knew who did serve were not fighting for their country or for any noble purpose other than to protect their brother in arms who was fighting right next to them.

The people we honor today do not expect my gratitude.  They are dead and far beyond expecting a anything.  They certainly are not expecting a long and peaceful life, or a family, or a chance to make their way in the world -- all of that has been denied them.  The people we honor today  deserve and receive my admiration, my respect, my thanks, and == sadly -- my pity, because the life that should have been theirs is not.

One of my favorite songs is "The Green Fields of France," in which a wanderer comes across the grace of Willie McBride who died at the age of 19 in the battle fields of France during the Great War.  At one pint in the song, Willie is asked:

"Did you leave 'ere a wife or a sweetheart behind?

In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?

Although  you died back in 1916

In that faithful heart are you ever nineteen?

Or are you a stranger without even a name

Enclosed in forever, behind a glass frame?

In an old photograph, torn, battered, and stained

And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame."

And every year at this time, I am reminded of my namesake.  My legal name is Ralph Harold House.  The Ralph is for my father, who did not want a Big Ralph and a Little Ralph in the family.  the Harold is for Harold Speed, a friend of my parents who died in World War II at Guadalcanal.  Harold Speed was always called Jerry -- I don't know why,  but Jerry was not his middle name -- and since birth I have been called Jerry in honor of him.  My parents never talked about their childhood or their life before marriage, so I know absolutely nothing about Harold Speed.  It may sound corny, but in honor of him, I have always tried to be the very best Jerry I could be.  I hope that is enough for him because that is all that I can offer, that somehow his name lives on -- honorably -- through me.

So, Harold -- Jerry -- although we never met, I am not grateful for your service.  I not grateful that you died.  I am. however, honored to share your name and that, somehow, the better parts of you continue on through me.  It is a privilege to bear your name and I do so with honor, respect, pride, and sincerity.  I just wish that you and so many others had been allowed to live your own lives.