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Memorial Day: If you’re reading this… — 12 Comments

  1. Amen.

    I have a friend, now dying of cancer, who looks forward to seeing the husband she lost so many years ago in Vietnam. May the reunion be joyful.

  2. neo: Beautiful. I see nothing necessarily wrong with “heartstrings” songs either.

    The McGraw song reminded me quite a lot, in melody and feel, of an Australian country song Beccy Cole wrote for her country’s soldiers in Iraq about the same time. In some ways it’s the other side of McGraw.

    Cole had done a concert tour in Iraq and received an anguished letter from a fan who decided he couldn’t stand her anymore because of it.

    Poster Girl (Wrong Side of the World)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BZ6aqgvdFI

    you won’t listen to my songs anymore
    you ripped my poster off the wall
    because I’m a singer that went to the war
    you see no good in me at all

    well pardon me if I believe
    I haven’t got it wrong
    and before you turn your back on me
    I’ll sing you one more song

    because I shook hands with a digger
    on the wrong side of the world
    with a wife at home who holds her breath
    and brand new baby girl
    and a digger fights for freedom
    in a job that must be done
    and I let go of his hand so proud to be Australian

    and if unlike me you feel no pride at all
    then go ahead and take me off your wall
    because I prefer to be a poster girl
    on the wrong side of the world

    –Beccy Cole

    There are more lyrics but that’s the gist of it. I put the song and lyrics on my church email list when it was being dominated by a strident, anti-war vet who presumed to speak for all soldiers for all time. No one replied.

  3. I attended a service today at the Cemetery where my Mom and Dad are. Dad, WWII Navy vet, from Pearl to the end. Mom worked in ammunition plant in SF. Miss them.
    The service closed with TAPS. From the Civil War to today.

  4. Maybe not germane, but some years back, an NVA general was asked about the enemies he’d fought. ,from the Japanese through the Chinese. He said Americans were the most skilled and most fanatical. When asked about the latter, he said Americans had so much to live for that they were willing to die to protect it.
    McGraw is lefty jackass but he can sing to the heart. I will have to give the young Aussie girl a try as well.

    Ever notice the “anti-war vets” are bestowed with higher moral authority? Smedley Butlers’ s scam is lionized.
    For me, I mourn my buddies, better men than I and still proud of them.

  5. I memory of my brother, 2nd Lt. Thomas G. Dineen, Jr., USMC. Never forgotten.

  6. Indeed. Thank you for posting. May all those that fought and died for us be remembered today. They gave so much, everything really.

  7. There’s also Tim McGraw’s 2004 song “Live Like You Were Dying.” “This song is often associated with McGraw’s father, Tug McGraw, who was hospitalized with a brain tumor on March 12, 2003. It was revealed that he had cancer. He was given three weeks to live by the doctors, but surprisingly survived nine months. He died on January 5, 2004.”

    Yeah, there are those of us who will never forget Tug’s little dance on the mound after striking out Willie Wilson in Game 6 of the 1980 World Series. It comes at the end of this video version of “Live Like You Were Dying.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1c6045n7v4&ab_channel=Sun-Daze

    Considering that it took Tug seven years to acknowledge Tim as his son after Tim discovered his birth certificate in 1978, the song is a remarkable example of forgiveness and the healing that comes with it.

  8. Here’s a lovely Memorial Day Tribute featuring an intro by Ronald Reagan:
    _____________________________________________________

    “Mansions of the Lord”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL-xDkxg8pc

    To fallen soldiers let us sing,
    Where no rockets fly nor bullets wing,
    Our broken brothers let us bring
    To the Mansions of the Lord

    No more weeping,
    No more fight,
    No friends bleeding through the night,
    Just Divine embrace,
    Eternal light,
    In the Mansions of the Lord

    Where no mothers cry
    And no children weep,
    We shall stand and guard
    Though the angels sleep,
    Oh, through the ages let us keep
    The Mansions of the Lord
    _____________________________________________________

    I first heard “Mansions” in the film “We Were Soldiers” and was moved by it. I assumed it was an old classic like “For Those in Peril on the Sea,” but actually it was written for the film in 2002. The song was used in Reagan’s funeral a few years later.

  9. I’m probably supposed to care. I really don’t. Like Melania.

    Yeah, I care. I gave at the office.

  10. Hats off to the Lowe’s store in Gilroy CA. During my shopping experience there, an announcement was made over the loudspeaker that all employees would participate in a moment of silence in unity with and in respect for our fallen. and strongly urged their customers to participate during the playing of “Taps” which we all gladly did.

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