Memorial Day

Do you really know why we started having this holiday?
I mean, do you really know?

"It's a day to honor the military, right?"

You're halfway to being correct.  It's a day to honor the military dead; a day to remember those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.  It's not technically a day to honor veterans (That's Veterans day on November 11.), although it is a lot easier to thank them for what they did than thanking the dead because they can actually hear you.  So, I'm not saying you're terrible and wrong for thanking our veterans.  It's just a friendly reminder because, ironically, we sometimes forget what Memorial Day is really about.

Memorial Day's origins date back to the Civil War.  Some say it is inspired by Southern women who would go and decorate the graves.  Eventually this practice spread to the North, and the first formal Decoration Day, as it was originally called, took place on May 30, 1868.  Eventually, this got changed to being the last Monday of May so we can have three day weekends.

Because that's what's important right?  Having days off and barbecuing and going to parades and whatever else it is Americans do to celebrate the holiday.  I mean, that's what this is for, right?

Allow me to cite you some statistics:
Number of fatalities in the Civil War:  Approximately 620,000

• 2% of the population died in the conflict
• The combined total of fatalities in all other American wars did not exceed this total until the Vietnam War.
• In today's numbers, imagine if over the last four years, America had lost six million men and women in war.
• One in four Civil War soldiers did not return home; approximately three and a half million men (and a few disguised women) fought in the Civil War
• In today's numbers, that would mean we would have sent approximately thirty-four million servicemen and women out.
• The  US military only has approximately one and a half million active duty personnel.
• Two thirds died from disease.
• That's approximately 413,333 dead from disease; only 206,667 from battle.
• Our today numbers would then translate to four million dead from disease and a "mere" two million dead from battle.
• These statistics are only the fatalities, not the casualties (which includes those killed, wounded, and captured/missing), whose numbers were not matched in all other wars combined until our current War on Terror.

Do you understand the price that was paid alone in the war that inspired this holiday?  I'm not even citing you the statistics from the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War, the War on Terror, and any other conflicts (i.e., the Quasi War with France, the Indian wars) that Americans have been involved with.

Maybe America is not the country she started out as.  Maybe we romanticize the way things were in the past.  But the fact still remains that the freedoms we have have been preserved because of the sacrifice millions of men and women have made.  This sacrifice has not just been made by those who enlisted and paid the ultimate price of their lives--their families and friends also felt the pain of that sacrifice.  Although I can't think of anyone I personally know who has died in war, I have had lifelong friends who have been deployed, and I have prayed for their safety because I know how devastated I would be if anything happened to them.  But I'm lucky.  Not everyone my age has been so lucky.  The current war has roots in an attack that took place on my country when I was eleven.  How many other twenty-two year old women, both nowadays and throughout history, have had to hear the terrible news that their brother, their sister, their husband, their father, their boyfriend is now dead?

I have been interested in history since I was seven, and my first fascination was with World War II.  Now my main fascination is the Civil War.  Not a generation of Americans has not felt the horrors of war to some extent.  We have either romanticized or demonized it.  But at the end of the day, no matter how good a cause was fought for, no matter who won or lost, no matter how the war was perceived by the public, every war has required its participants to sacrifice.

And the ultimate sacrifice is what we honor on this Memorial Day.

Sources

The Civil War. Dir. Ken Burns. PBS. 1990. DVD-ROM. 
"Civil War Casualties." Civil War Trust. N.p., 2013. Web. 26 May 2013.
"Memorial Day History." Memorial Day. N.p., 4 Apr. 2009. Web. 26 May 2013.