A tribute to the valiant
Onward marches the Big Parade, forever into the somber beyond. A column of the young and the brave. Of the dutiful. When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can! — Emerson
Pictured here this Memorial Day are the soldiers from New York State whose line-of-duty deaths in Iraq were recorded since last Memorial Day.
Called by duty, gone to war. Gone to flowers.
On this day, we pause to mourn them — and all those who did not come home from the battlefields. The dead of this war. The dead of the last war.
The dead of all past wars.
To honor their sacrifices. To humbly offer them our gratitude and our prayers. To assure their loved ones that we, the living, do not forget.
Cannot forget. Must not forget.
These men fell in Iraq, adding to the toll of more than 4,500 Americans since the war started 15 years ago. While the war against Saddam is long over, the fight against ISIS has yet to finish.
And that other war, the war in Afghanistan, is also said to be over, yet 15,000 American warriors are still there.
Others fight and risk and give their lives elsewhere — Syria, Yemen, Niger and battlefields unnamed and unknown — in a shadow war, unconventional, undeclared, but every bit as real.
Without the gallant likes of these soldiers the horrors visited upon the United States one lovely late summer morning almost 17 years ago might well already have come again.
The measure of these wars, as with all the wars this nation has fought, will be taken by the children.
Your children. Our And their children.
And those whose loved ones are remembered here today.
Loved ones who now march in the Big Parade. Loved ones who now live on eternally, in the aching hearts left behind.
Here, on another Memorial Day, in fields of flowers, we salute and celebrate our unforgotten.
They who donned children. the uniform and wore it dutifully while they lived.
They who will surely wear it proudly for all the rest of time.
Forevermore. As the Big Parade marches on, into the beyond.