The Ultimate Sacrifice

On this weekend when we remember all service members who gave their lives for this country, it is important to look past the headstones and other memorials. Those fallen heroes were men and women; sons and daughters; husbands, brothers, sisters, wives, cousins and friends. They laid down their lives so that we might enjoy the blessings of freedom and liberty.

But who are these extraordinary individuals? Sadly, most of us who have worn the uniform know someone who made the ultimate sacrifice. But for millions of Americans, the concepts of "war" and "service" are almost foreign. The nation's military has been at war for the past decade, but for most of us, life goes on as usual. For the vast majority of the nation's families, there is no worry about a son or daughter serving in harm's way, or a uniformed officer appearing on their doorstep, delivering the worst news any parent or sibling can receive.

So, on this Memorial Day, it's important for us to move beyond the holiday's symbolism, and remember the individual sacrifice of those who gave their lives. If you don't know a family that has been touched by the nation's wars, read this piece by Childs Walker of the Baltimore Sun. It tells the story of Travis Manion and Brendan Looney, friends and roommates at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Today, they are joined in death at Arlington National Cemetery. Manion, a Marine Corps officer, died in Iraq in 2007; Looney, a SEAL officer, was killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan last year. Both were remarkable young men, dedicated to leading their troops and serving their nation. An excerpt:

Though undeniably tragic, the culmination of Travis and Brendan's bond is more than that for the people who loved them. It's a story of bravery, of goodness, of two men who died doing what they were put on the earth to do.

"They're probably the two best guys I've ever known and the two best guys I ever will know," says their friend and academy classmate Ben Mathews. "I think it means something that they're together. It's terrible that they had to give their lives, but they're shining examples of what Americans can strive to be."

Brendan was days from beginning SEAL training in San Diego when the news of Travis' death tore his world asunder. His sister, Erin, had always viewed him as indestructible and was taken aback to hear him hurt so badly. "That was the toughest part," she says. "It was the first time I ever saw Brendan in a different light. Not that he wasn't still tough, but maybe he was a little more vulnerable."

The Navy would not allow Brendan to leave for the funeral. In his fury, he briefly considered quitting. Instead, he dedicated his training to Travis and won the coveted "Honor Man" spot as the top graduate of his class.

On missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, Brendan wore two personal items — his wedding ring and a metal wrist band Travis' parents gave him to commemorate his friend. At his wedding reception in 2008, he handed Travis' mom, Janet, the gold trident pin he received for completing SEAL training.

"I only got this because of Travis," he said.

Read the whole thing, and take a moment to remember Brendan, Travis and all the extraordinary Americans who paid the price for our freedom. We owe them so much.

H/T: Neptunus Lex.

As We Remember

Our newest column for Examiner.com looks at Memorial Day, and some of the heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice.

Decoration Day

The graves of Civil War soldiers at Friendship Cemetery in Columbus, Mississippi. One of nation's first Memorial Day observances took place at the cemetery in 1866.


On the morning on 6 April 1862, Union and Confederate armies collided in rural Hardin County, Tennessee, along the Mississippi State Line, near a church called Shiloh. The battle that followed would be the largest--and bloodiest--in U.S. history (to that point); more than 3,500 troops died, and another 16,000 were wounded in two days of desperate fighting.

Union forces secured a hard-won victory during the engagement, which took its name from the church that became part of the battlefield. The battle began with a surprise Confederate attack, aimed at pushing Union forces into a nearby swap. Awaiting reinforcements, Union Commander Ulysses S. Grant was devoting much of his time to the training of inexperienced troops, unaware that Rebel units were less than five miles away. Defensive positions among federal troops were virtually non-existent.

As a result, Union lines quickly crumbled when Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnson began his attack. But determined resistance along the Union left, in an area called the Hornet's Nest, bought precious time, allowing Grant to reestablish defensive lines at Pittsburg Landing, along the Tennessee River.

Meanwhile, the Confederate hopes received a fatal blow (literally and figuratively), when General Johnson received a leg wound around 2:30 p.m. Believing it to be minor, he sent his personal physician to tend to wounded Union soldiers. In reality, the round that struck Johnson's knee--almost certainly fired from a southern position--had severed an artery in the general's leg. His boot filled with blood and he died a short time later.

As daylight began to fade, Johnson's subordinate, General P.G.T. Beauregard, decided not to press the attack, giving Grant more time to plan and reorganize. The next day he launched a massive counterattack at dawn, forcing Beauregard to retreat. The invasion route into northern Mississippi and Alabama was reopened, while the Confederates contemplated not only the loss of a key battle, but (arguably) their best commander--before the emergence of Robert E. Lee.

More than a thousand men died on each side at Shiloh, and many more were wounded. With few hospitals in the area surrounding the battlefield, scores of wounded men were evacuated to the city of Columbus, 80 miles south of Pittsburg Landing. The lucky ones made the trip by train; the rest made the excruciating journey by wagon, across bumpy roads.

Given the limits of military medicine during that era, hundreds of wounded soldiers who survived the battle died days or weeks later in Columbus. Many of them were buried in Friendship Cemetery, which remains a local landmark.

By some accounts, the ladies of Columbus visited the cemetery in late April of 1862, decorating the graves of Confederate soldiers who were killed at Shiloh, or succumbed from their wounds after the battle. They resumed the practice on April 25, 1866. Noticing that the graves of Union soldiers went undecorated, the women of Columbus placed flowers on the burial plots of their former enemies.

Columbus wasn't the only American town to remember the war dead in that spring of 1866. But it could be argued that the Mississippi commemoration had the most impact. The simple act of generosity and reconciliation was noted in Horace Greely's New York Tribune and it inspired Frances Miles Finch's poem, "The Blue and the Gray," which became required memorization for generations of school children.

The Columbus event also influenced the establishment of a formal Memorial Day. In 1868, General John A. Logan, leader of a veterans group called the Grand Army of the Republic, issued General Order Number 11 designating May 30 as a memorial day "for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion." The first national celebration of the event took place on May 30th of that same year, at Arlington National Cemetery.

Originally known as Decoration Day, the commemoration officially became Memorial Day at the turn of the century. By that time, the practice of decorating the graves of dead soldiers had become customary throughout the nation. But the annual act of remembrance might have never occurred, except for a bloody Civil War battle, and an act of kindness by a group of southern women.