Memorial Day

One of the finer things the medium of television has ever produced is the Turner Pictures 1993 movie, Gettysburg. Based on the Michael Shaara book, The Killer Angels, it is a slightly fictionalized but extremely accurate depiction of the three-day battle July 1-3, 1863, that became the “ebb tide” of the Confederacy in the American Civil War. The climax of the movie is Pickett’s charge performed by over 3,000 Civil War re-enactors.

The first time I watched it I was so overwhelmed by the awe of the charge I almost cried. Looking across that field at the 3,000, I tried to imagine what the actual attack with five times that many soldiers coming must have looked like. And then the carnage; half of them, 7,500, dead or wounded when it was over.

There is a very tender scene in the movie on the evening of the second day. Confederate General Lewis Armistead, played by Richard Jordan, is at the headquarters of General James Longstreet, played by Tom Berenger. In the background a Rebel crooner is singing Kathleen Mavourneen, the mournful Irish tune about lovers saying good-bye, while the generals reminisce about their days in California before the war. Armistead remarks that they had sung that same song at dinner the night before he, Longstreet, and General Richard Garnett left to join the Confederate army.

Also at the dinner was Armistead’s best friend, Winfield Scott Hancock, who now commanded the Union II Corps on the opposite side of the field. Tears well in Armistead’s eyes as he wonders what fate had brought them to this hour. The next day at the height of the charge his brigade pierced the Union line briefly, and both he and Hancock were wounded.

The performance by Richard Jordan was touching, but it is even more moving if you know the history and the events that followed. For Richard Jordan it may have been his finest performance. It was also his last. He died of a brain tumor less than a year later before the movie was released. His character, “Lo” Armistead, was a tragic figure as well. Armistead had been married twice, but both wives died, one of fever and one of cholera, and two of his three children had also died. His wounds in the battle were only minor in one arm and one leg, neither requiring amputation and neither considered to have been life threatening. But two days later he suddenly died for unknown reasons at the age of 46. It has been suggested that he simply had no more will to live.

One of the sad tragedies of the Civil War was that it divided families and friends. Brothers fought against brothers, fathers against sons, and friends turned against each other. Some developed bitter, life-long hatreds that no peace or reconstruction could heal. It seemed to be, as William Seward called it, an “irrepressible conflict” fought so fanatically that more American fighting men lost their lives in that war than all other wars America has been involved in combined.

One thing the Civil War illustrates clearly is that when the American soldier has been called to duty, no matter what reason or where, no matter how daring or deadly, he has gone to war with energy and resolve, loving country more than even his own life.

From the freezing winters at Valley Forge to Yorktown, from Ft. McHenry to New Orleans, to Chapultepec in Mexico; to Bull Run, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the river of death called Chickamauga, and a quiet church in the wilderness known as Shiloh; to San Juan Hill in Cuba and Manila Bay; the trenches in France and the break through at Belleau Wood; from Pearl Harbor to a thousand locations across the Pacific and throughout Europe, to the frozen Chosin Reservoir on the Korean peninsula, the steaming jungles of Southeast Asia, Hue and Khe Sanh, the Balkans and Africa; and today in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, American servicemen and women have done their duty in the harshest conditions and loneliest places on earth. They have endured and risen victorious because of the great love they have for their country.

Another popular song during the Civil War was Tenting on the Old Campground. It speaks of lonely soldiers far from home, wishing for the war to end, of their wives’ prayerful vigils and of their comrades already gone. Not well known today, it is a poignant, reminisceful tune that gets to the heart of the serviceman’s feelings on distant battlefields.

We are tenting tonight on the old campground,
Thinking of days gone by,
Of the loved ones at home that gave us the hand,
And the tear that said, “Good-bye!”

Many are the hearts that are weary tonight,
Wishing for the war to cease;
Many are the hearts that are looking for the right
To see the dawn of peace.
Tenting tonight, tenting tonight,
Tenting on the old campground.

This Memorial Day as we celebrate with cookouts and family outings, watch the “Memorial Day Classic” Indy 500, or the NASCAR 600 mile race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, go to church, watch or play baseball, let us not forget our fighting men and women who are in harm’s way. They are the ones this holiday is about. They are serving to preserve for us the freedom to have our picnics and our celebrations. They are serving to preserve freedom for liberals who loathe them, and for a president who wants to cut their pay and make them buy their own medical insurance. They are far from home, often lonely, thinking of family and loved ones. When you pray this Memorial Day, don’t forget to remember our men and women in uniform and ask that they’ll be brought safely home, and that those who will give “the last full measure of devotion,” may be safely carried to an eternal home in peace.

God Bless the American serviceman.