The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
Guest Editorial, By Elaine Slater Reese
21 May 2003
The soldier is dead - killed fighting for his country. He's an eighteen year old, just out of school.
He's a twenty nine year old husband and father of two young children.
She's a nurse whose dream was to care for others. Another made the military his career and only had three more years to go.
One died as a P.O.W. And there is the one who never touched our soil again - the one missing in action.
Each was once someone's darling baby and then a photo of a loved one in uniform.
Each did his part to protect our freedoms we so often take for granted.
I visit their final resting places. At each I stand somberly and try to take in the meaning of the headstones.
In the more than 100 national cemeteries, the stones are meticulously placed, row after row of those who served and died.
The stones in state cemeteries are also such a part of the history of our ancestors.
I visit our local cemetery and find scattered throughout stones of all types and sizes and tributes to a family member who left, so alive and determined, and who came home in a box.
I visit the old, old cemeteries, now a few broken headstones surrounded by a broken down fence in the corner of a farm field.
With my fingers, I try to trace the unreadable letters and find a son who died in the Civil War, a brother lost in World War I.
There is one great similarity at each site. As I stand in the bright sunlight and feel the gentle breeze, I hear faint sounds which seem to grow louder and louder. First it is the proud beat of a drum and the shrill sound of the fife.
I see the soldiers marching. Then I hear the deafening sounds of gunshots and explosions. Next is a bugler playing Taps.
What a mournful, haunting melody. And from all corners of the earth, choirs are singing.
From the North, I hear "God Bless America". From the South comes "The Star-Spangled Banner". "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" rises from the East.
And out of the West are the strains of "Amazing Grace".
And in the skies, larger than description, the Red, White, and Blue is flying proudly in the wind. Soldier, we owe you so much. Thank you.