Memorial Day - In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched with Fire - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. * PITD
#MemorialDay - In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched with Fire - #OliverWendellHolmesJr. * PITD
a Civil War veteran and distinguished Supreme Court justice, Delivered this Memorial Day address in Keene, New Hampshire, on May 30, 1884.
https://www.whatsoproudlywehai....l.org/curriculum/the
**
Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still kept up Memorial Day, and it set me thinking of the answer. Not the answer that you and I should give to each other"”not the expression of those feelings that, so long as you and I live, will make this day sacred to memories of love and grief and heroic youth. but an answer which should command the assent of those who do not share our memories, and in which we of the North and our brethren of the South could join in perfect accord.
**
But we equally believed that those who stood against us held just as sacred convictions that were the opposite of ours, and we respected them as every man with a heart must respect those who give all for their belief. . . . You could not stand up day after day in those indecisive contests where overwhelming victory was impossible because neither side would run as they ought when beaten
**
So to the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial Day is still kept up we may answer, It celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiasm and faith is the condition of acting greatly. To fight out a war you must believe something and want something with all your might. So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching. More than that, you must be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out. All that is required of you is that you should go somewhither as hard as ever you can. The rest belongs to fate. One may fall"”at the beginning of the charge or at the top of the earthworks"”but in no other way can he reach the rewards of victory.
**
But even if I am wrong, even if those, who come after us are to forget all that we hold dear, and the future is to teach and kindle its children in ways as yet unrevealed, it is enough for us that this day is dear and sacred.
**
Accidents may call up the events of the war. You see a battery of guns go by at a trot, and for a moment you are back at White Oak Swamp or Antietam or on the Jerusalem Road. You hear a few shots fired in the distance, and for an instant your heart stops as you say to yourself, The skirmishers are at it, and listen for the long roll of fire from the main line. You meet an old comrade after many years of absence; he recalls the moment when you were nearly surrounded by the enemy, and again there comes up to you that swift and cunning thinking on which once hung life and freedom"”Shall I stand the best chance if I try the pistol or the sabre on that man who means to stop me? . . . These and the thousand other events we have known are called up, I say, by accident, and, apart from accident, they lie forgotten.
**
But as surely as this day comes round we are in the presence of the dead. For one hour, twice a year at least"”at the regimental dinner, where the ghosts sit at table more numerous than the living, and on this day when we decorate their graves"”the dead come back and live with us.
I see them now, more than I can number, as once I saw them on this earth. They are the same bright figures, or their counterparts, that come also before your eyes; and when I speak of those who were my brothers the same words describe yours.
**
I have spoken of some of the men who were near to me among others very near and dear, not because their lives have become historic, but because their lives are the type of what every soldier has known and seen in his own company. In the great democracy of self-devotion private and general stand side by side. Unmarshaled save by their own deeds, the armies of the dead sweep before us, "wearing their wounds like stars.". . . I speak of those whom I have seen. But you all have known such; you, too, remember!
**
But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.
**
#PatriotInTheDark
Images used are from several U.S. Military Cemeteries' and Memorials from around the world. Including Spanish American War, Civil War, WWI, WWII Korea, Vietnam and other conflicts.