[American Greatness] Today, we celebrate Memorial Day. What does that mean? Unfortunately, for many citizens, it signifies just another three-day weekend, the beginning of the summer season, and an excuse for a weekend cook-out. Sadly, we have lost even the vestiges of the meaning of this holiday: a solemn time, serving both as catharsis for those who fought and survived, and to ensure that those who followed would not forget the sacrifice of those who died that the American republic might live.
Americans have forgotten how to honor their war heroes and to remember their war dead. As my friend and fellow Marine, "Bing" West observed several years ago in his remarkable book about Fallujah, No True Glory, stories of soldierly courage deserve "to be recorded and read by the next generation. Unsung, the noblest deed will die."
What we now call Memorial Day was established by General John A. Logan’s "General Order No. 11″ of the Grand Army of the Republic dated May 5, 1868. This order reads in part: "The 30th day of May 1868 is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers and otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land." Logan’s order served to ratify a practice that was already widespread, both in the North and the South, in the years immediately following the Civil War.
Memorial Day should cause us to ask why Americans are willing to fight and die. In his book, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle, Glen Gray provided one answer: "Numberless soldiers have died, more or less willingly, not for country or honor or religious faith or for any other abstract good, but because they realized that by fleeing their posts and rescuing themselves, they would expose their companions to greater danger. Such loyalty to the group is the essence of fighting morale." 
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