Three years after the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868, the head of an organization of former Union soldiers and sailors – the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) – established Decoration Day (and renamed Memorial Day) as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. Maj. Gen. John A. Logan declared it should be May 30. The first large observance was held that year at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The cemetery already held the remains of 20,000 Union dead and several hundred Confederate dead. After World War I, Memorial Day, was expanded to honor those who have died in all American wars.
Abraham Lincoln’s words, from the battlefield at Gettysburg, echo across the centuries in search of meaning, for today: It is for us to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. John McCrae, sifting through the pain of Flanders fields – where a million soldiers from more than 50 different countries were wounded, missing, or killed in action – breathes, the breathless words of those who in those fields died, To you from failing hands we throw the torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders fields.
We dare not continue the journey across war after war, it aches, even more, to see that war still prospers and slaughters – so many have died in vain? What torch do we hold on high?
God shall judge between the nations,
and shall decide for many peoples; and
they shall beat their swords into
ploughshares, and spears into pruning
hooks; nation shall not lift up sword
against nation; neither shall they learn
war anymore (Isaiah 2:4).