(HOST) This Memorial Day commentator Peter Gilbert will be in his family’s hometown of Dorset. Each year, there’s a brief ceremony in the church before the parade to the cemetery, where the honor guard’s three-volley salute and the playing of taps – literally brings home the meaning of the day.
(GILBERT) The simple Memorial Day service in Dorset is profoundly moving – for locals and visitors alike; all veterans, in uniform or not, are invited to enter the church with the color guard. The majority are World War II vets, now all over eighty, like my father. For many people, the most powerful part of the service is the recitation of the chronological Honor Roll – the names, dates, locations, and where known, cause of death of the fifty-three Dorset residents who gave the last full measure of devotion. It’s a poignant march through American history, and a powerful reminder of both the collective weight of sacrifice and the very personal cost – the fact that each casualty had a name and a face and a loving family – and a future cut short.
Of the fifty-three honored dead, one died in 1848 of yellow fever on his way home from the Mexican American War; thirty-six died in the Civil War, four in World War I, seven in World War II, two in Korea, and three in the Vietnam War. Of the thirty-six Civil War casualties, eleven were killed in action and twenty-five died of disease.
Civil War soldiers killed in action included:
Louis Chameau and Henry Heald, both killed June 29, 1862, Savages Station, Virginia;
(Henry’s brother Myron was to die of dysentery six months later in Pensacola, Florida);
Thomas Burns, July 3, 1864, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania;
Waldo Barrows and Horace Hill, both killed May 5, 1864, Battle of the Wilderness, Virginia;
Joshua Bromley, May 10, 1864, Spotsylvania, Virginia;
William Harwood, June 5, 1864, Cold Harbor, Virginia;
And Marquis Smith and Bela Fisher, both killed in July and August 1864, Petersburg, Virginia.
In World War I three died of disease here in the States. And John Tuohy was killed in action September 29, 1918 on the Hindenburg Line in France. Then come the names of the fallen from the Second World War, Korea, and Vietnam, including, among others:
Myron Brophy, December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor;
Horace Greeley Harwood, September 7, 1942 flying a Spitfire from England;
Donald Tobin, January 19, 1945, Battle of the Bulge;
Clifton Baker, September 6, 1953, Korea;
Richard Thum, November 25, 1968, Vietnam; and
Allan Francis Wilkins, killed in a helicopter explosion, April 8, 1971 near Bien Hoa Air Force Base, Vietnam.
For me, Memorial Day is best understood in small-town America. For its the specifics of names and stories and the nexus between people and place that make one feel most keenly the power and import of casualty statistics and abstract statements about service and sacrifice.
Peter Gilbert is executive director of the Vermont Humanities Council.