Why Did They Do It?

Few instruments evoke emotion as deeply as a bagpipe. On Memorial Day, when “Taps” will be played countless times across our land, it will likely be on a bugle. Lumps will form in throats and some will openly weep as the notes reverberate through the air. It is fitting these should result from that music as thoughts flash before us, decades and centuries past, when young men, especially, took up arms for their country, and many died on distant battlefields. Fewer, it seems, can find the time each Memorial Day to recall such noble sacrifice for us.
But it remains the sole domain of the bagpipe, with its echoing sound that clings to our ears like a mist to a meadow that makes us think of those legions of soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen who died that we might be a free people.
Recently, I was looking at war movies on YouTube and came across several clips that ought to be viewed by everyone as we focus on this solemn observance. They portrayed the emotions of soldiers, some young, others much older, who gave orders or simply followed orders that caused guns to fire with the expectation of killing the enemy. Alive one minute, dead or wounded the next, they fell while others advanced.
I’ve listened repeatedly to the lyrics of “Sgt. MacKenzie,” a Scottish song made popular in the Mel Gibson movie of the Vietnam War “We Were Soldiers” in its final battle scene. Translated into English from Scottish, it loses something, but here it is:
Lay me down in the cold cold ground,
Where before many more have gone.
When they come I will stand my ground,
Stand my ground I’ll not be afraid
Thoughts of home take away my fear.
Sweat and blood hide my veil of tears,
Once a year, say a prayer for me.
Close your eyes and remember me
Never more shall I see the sun.
For I fell to a German’s gun.
Written and sung by Joe Kilna Mackenzie, the song is in memory of his grandfather Sgt. Charles Stuart MacKenzie, a Seaforth Highlander, who fought in World War I. MacKenzie, was bayoneted to death at age 35, defending one of his injured colleagues, as troops were fighting, unimagined today, hand-to-hand in muddy trenches. The magnitude of slaughter in that war was particularly horrid. Cemeteries in Europe hold the mortal remains of many of those who fell from all warring nations.
Such deaths happen on all sides in all wars. For those who fought in wars, such things are best forgotten, yet often they cannot be ignored. So a bagpipe seems to soothe that inner hurt with musical balm of the centuries.
In 1964, the singer Buffy Sainte-Marie recorded “Universal Soldier,” that begins, “He’s 5 feet two and he’s 6 feet four, He fights with missiles and with spears, He’s all of 31 and he’s only 17, He’s been a soldier for a thousand years.”
Memorial Day speakers will expound the selfless sacrifice of men and women who have offered themselves, whether by draft or enlistment, to become universal soldiers. Without them where would we be?
Outside my office window fly the American and New Jersey flags, without those who will be remembered Monday, what flag might be flying outside that window? Lacking citizen-soldiers who first believed in freedom and a better way of life, the Union Jack might be there. Without the “blues” who died, would the Confederate stars and bars wave? With no selfless soldiers and sailors, a red, black and white flag with a black swastika might be at the top of the flagpole.
As religion is personal, so Memorial Day is also very personal. Folks with no connection to Memorial Day cannot grasp the meaning of wreaths, flags at half-staff, and old veterans who rise, if they can, from wheelchairs to salute the passing American flag. They can’t understand how a bugle or a bagpipe can make people cry as they gaze into space. They won’t comprehend how degrading it is to everyone who ever wore a uniform, or who died wearing one, to turn Memorial Day into a cheap marketing tool for cars and furniture and such stuff.
Every town that denotes the solemn day with a ceremony has someone living there who cares, someone who lost a loved one in war, someone who will proudly wear one of those small red poppies on their collar Monday.
Though it may be of little benefit, I urge everyone who reads this to attend their local or Cape May County Memorial Day ceremony, which will be at 2 p.m. at the Veterans Cemetery on Crest Haven Road. Whether a bugler plays “Taps” or a piper plays “Amazing Grace” or “Going Home,” those who are remembered may look down and know that the generation of today considers what they did the greatest expression of love anyone can give.