On This Memorial Day....

Lt. Edward J. Degan, Jr.

There was a time when everyone knew someone - friend or family member - who gave their life for their country. I cannot even claim personal familiarity with my uncle Ed Degan (pictured above) who was one of the first American servicemen to die in the Battle of the Bulge on December 15, 1944. He died fourteen years before I was born. He was just four days shy of his 24th birthday when he was cut down by one of Hitler's tank shells. I always wonder what might have been; what kind of cousins I might have had; what kind of woman he might have married. By all accounts, the guy had everything going for him and so much to live for. His siblings and his parents eventually adjusted to life without Eddie Degan. When I was growing up, whenever any of them reminisced about him, it was always with great affection and humor - with not a bit of sadness or bitterness.   Today he lies in the military cemetery in St. Avold, France.

A lot of Americans have given "the last full measure of devotion" since April of 1917 and the beginning of the first world war. Too many of those wars were unjustified - four of them by my count. That sad fact doesn't detract a bit from the ultimate sacrifice that was made by those who never came home. On this Memorial Day - of all days - let's reflect on those sacrifices. That's a form of patriotism that defies contemplation.

Happy Memorial Day, folks.

Tom Degan

Goshen, NY

SUGGESTED READING:

The Gettysburg Address
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Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation - or any nation - so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is all together fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here 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 - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg, PA
November 19, 1863