Quote of the Day (Franklin Roosevelt, on Americans’ Rights and Those Who ‘Died to Win Them’)

“Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them.”— U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), “Proclamation 2524—Bill of Rights Day,” Nov. 27, 1941, The American Presidency Project

Quote of the Day (John F. Kennedy, on Memorial Day)

“Memorial Day each year provides a fitting occasion upon which Americans may not only pay tribute to our honored dead but also unite in prayer for success in our search for a just and lasting peace.”—President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), “Proclamation 3477—Prayer for Peace, Memorial Day,” May 18, 1962

Quote of the Day (Ambrose Bierce, on a ‘Theater of War’)

“No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of war.”— Journalist, Union Civil War soldier, and satirist Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), “A Horseman in the Sky,” originally published in 1889 in the San Francisco Examiner, revised as part of Bierce’s short-story collection Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891)

The story of the last days of Bierce may be most familiar to readers and film fans through the 1985 Carlos Fuentes novel Old Gringo, as well as the movie adaptation four years later starring Gregory Peck, Jane Fonda and Jimmy Smits. Fuentes said he became interested in the cynical Bierce when he read Tales of Soldiers and Civilians as a teen.

I chose the above quote for my Memorial Day post. Readers desiring more information about the impact of the Civil War on Bierce-- a decorated Civil War veteran, forced out of the fighting because of a head wound—and how it left him with a belief in war’s absurdity and the determination to convey its “rattle and roar” in unsparing, exact detail, might want to read this post of mine from nine years ago.

Quote of the Day (Ambrose Bierce, on Dying Civil War Soldiers Reaching for a Last Drink of Water)

“Possibly his impressionable mind was half conscious of something familiar in its [an unfamiliar form] shambling, awkward gait. Before it had approached near enough to resolve his doubts he saw that it was followed by another and another. To right and to left were many more; the whole open space about him were alive with them--all moving toward the brook.

“They were men. They crept upon their hands and knees. They used their hands only, dragging their legs. They used their knees only, their arms hanging idle at their sides. They strove to rise to their feet, but fell prone in the attempt. They did nothing naturally, and nothing alike, save only to advance foot by foot in the same direction. Singly, in pairs and in little groups, they came on through the gloom, some halting now and again while others crept slowly past them, then resuming their movement. They came by dozens and by hundreds; as far on either hand as one could see in the deepening gloom they extended and the black wood behind them appeared to be inexhaustible. The very ground seemed in motion toward the creek. Occasionally one who had paused did not again go on, but lay motionless. He was dead. Some, pausing, made strange gestures with their hands, erected their arms and lowered them again, clasped their heads; spread their palms upward, as men are sometimes seen to do in public prayer.”—Civil war soldier (and later journalist-satirist) Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913?), “Chickamauga,” in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians: And Other Stories (1891)

Memorial Day originated in the wake of the Civil War. Just how harrowing the conflict was can be glimpsed through the life and work of a Union soldier who went on to win considerable fame—and, because of his mysterious disappearance a half-century later, just as much notoriety—as a writer: Ambrose Bierce.

Bierce felt that a noncombatant simply couldn’t understand what a veteran had experienced on the battlefront. Nevertheless, whether through a sense that he ought to bridge this gulf in comprehension or as an exorcism of the torment he had experienced, he wrote a collection of stories based on what he’d seen, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians.

Trained as a topographical engineer, Bierce missed few if any details about landscapes and spaces, as seen here. I have not been able to find as many photographs in the “Western theater” of the conflict (where Chickamauga—the second-bloodiest battle of the whole war—took place) as battles in the East such as Antietam and Gettysburg. Bierce’s verbal account, then, will have to stand for the images that never were visually recorded and sold, but continued to haunt survivors for the rest of their lives.

Quote of the Day (George Santayana, on ‘The End of War’)

“Only the dead have seen the end of war."— Spanish-born American philosopher, essayist, and poet George Santayana (1863-1952), “Tipperary,” in Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)

The image accompanying this post is the Southwestern Pennsylvania World War II Veterans Memorial, which I visited while in Pittsburgh in June 2019.

Photo of the Day: Southwestern Pennsylvania World War II Memorial, Pittsburgh PA

I took this picture in late June of last year, while on a weekend stop in Pittsburgh. The Southwestern Pennsylvania World War II Memorial, erected in Point State Park – the downtown confluence of the Steel City’s three rivers—was dedicated in 2013, in recognition of the region’s significant contribution to the war effort. 

Its 16 granite panels recount experiences ranging from Medal-of-Honor heroism to defense production on the homefront. Further enhancing the memorial’s educational component—which otherwise, with the passage of time, would increasingly be lost to popular memory—are eight other text panels that explain events that shaped the region, led to the war and determined its conclusion.

The memorial now attracts an estimated 50,000 annual visitors. But, for those who can’t go there—and even for those who have made it—I would also recommend visiting the memorial’s Website, which features interviews with five veterans of the conflict—among the area’s dwindling survivors of “The Greatest Generation.”

Quote of the Day (Marjorie Pickthall, on the ‘Marching Men’ of WWI)

“With souls unpurged and steadfast breath

They supped the sacrament of death.

And for each one, far off, apart,

Seven swords have rent a woman’s heart.”—Canadian poet Marjorie Pickthall (1883-1922), “Marching Men,” from The Wood Carver's Wife (1922)

Remember those lines this Memorial Day, and beyond—along with this one, from Herman Wouk’s novel War and Remembrance: “Either war is finished, or we are.”

(The image accompanying this post shows a grim, agonized Kirk Douglas, knowing his men face certain death, in Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory. That 1957 film showed, in less poetic terms than Ms. Pickthall’s verses, the immense, lacerating sacrifice of soldiers in WWI—indeed, implicitly, of all wars.)

Quote of the Day (Franklin Roosevelt, on Those Who Died to Win Our Freedom)

“Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them." —Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), 32^nd President of the United States, “Bill of Rights Day Proclamation,” Dec. 15, 1941

In November 2013, I took the photo accompanying this post of a portion of the wall at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. As of May 2018, 58,320 names were listed there. 

The portion of the wall I’ve focused on here—Panel 25, Line 54—contains the name of Lt. William C. Ryan Jr. of Bogota, N.J., who went missing in action on May 11, 1969.

The remains of this Marine Corps pilot—who graduated from my alma mater, St. Cecilia High School of Englewood, NJ—were discovered and identified in Laos, and he was finally laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery two years ago.

Billy Ryan would have turned 75 years old last month. It is sobering to think that so much of the prime of his life was lost. God rest his soul, and let's pray that someday the world will reach a point when such extraordinary sacrifices no longer have to be made.

Quote of the Day (Walt Whitman, on a Fallen Union Soldier)

“Vigil strange I kept on the field one night;

When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day,

One look I but gave which your dear eyes return’d with a look I shall never forget,

One touch of your hand to mine O boy, reach’d up as you lay on the ground.”— American poet and Civil War volunteer nurse Walt Whitman (1819-1892), “Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night,” from Drum-Taps (1864)