A Holiday of Remembrance

Who remembers?

These days Memorial Day is more a holiday of reunion than a time to remember.

Alumni of Midwest high schools by the thousands go home for a weekend of reunions, an honorable custom that has yet to take hold in the South.

Another name for Memorial Day is “Decoration Day.” In many places graves are decorated, not just those of veterans.

The history of this holiday is ambiguous, but its origins certainly reach back to the late 1800's.

Thousands of war dead from conflicts that punctuated our national history lie in national cemeteries. American soil exists where few Americans go. These fields across the seas are near battlefields that were too far away to ship the thousands of bodies back home. Very few bodies were returned home.

There are American Cemeteries and Memorials throughout the world. The “populations” of a few American cemeteries are larger than some cities: Lorraine France 10,489; Manila, Philippines 17,206; Meuse-Argonne, France 14,246; Normandy, France 9,386. The Manila cemetery contains a memorial to 36,282 Americans “Missing.”

Of the 136,516 Americans killed during World War I, there were 4,452 MIA.

There were 405,399 that died during WWII with 78,976 Missing in Action.

The Korean War claimed 54,246 American service men and women killed, with 8,196 listed as “missing,” lost or buried at sea.

The numbers are numbing, but each number represents a family member. I never met Dale Cleveland but knew his wife as “Aunt Cat.” They were close friends of my parents. Dale Cleveland was born in August of 1917 and graduated from Texas A& M with an ROTC commission.

He occasionally smoked a cigar and taught Agriculture at Berry College.

In June of 1941 Dale was activated into military service. The 531st Amphibious Regiment trained in Ireland, and participated in amphibious landings on North Africa, then Sicily. On the morning of Sep-