Memorial Day 2015
The following is an edited version of a talk I was honored to give at a Veterans Flagpole Dedication on Memorial Day 2015 in the town where I grew up.
Good morning. Distinguished guests and visitors; thank you for the opportunity to speak here today.
“CURFMAN, THOMAS D., Sergeant, Deceased, Company G, 28th Infantry. For extraordinary heroism in action near Exermont, France, October 5, 1918. When the advance of his company was retarded by machine gun fire, he took an automatic rifle from a wounded gunner and went forward alone to a position from which he opened fire and destroyed the enemy nest. He was himself mortally wounded. Next of kin Mrs. George Curfman, mother, 906 North Seventh Street, Steubenville, Ohio.”
That was the citation for the Distinguished Service Cross awarded posthumously to Sergeant Curfman, an award for valor second only to the Medal of Honor. Mrs. George Curfman received her son’s body along with the Distinguished Service Cross that he received for his heroic actions that day in France. It is unlikely that she had ever heard of the town in France where her son died of his wounds.
The list of servicemembers from Steubenville and Jefferson County in World War I is astonishing. Nearly 2,000 men volunteered or were drafted for service in the “War to End All Wars.” They served in the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. Over fifty arrived home in flag draped caskets on a train. Some never came home until 1921, when the remains of US servicemembers were returned to the United States. Some are interred in the great American cemetery at the Meuse-Argonne, France, where thousands of pearl-white graves mark those final resting places where, to paraphrase British poet-sailor Rupert Brooke: “There’s some corner of a foreign field/ That is for ever America. There shall be/ In that rich earth a richer dust concealed.”
No fallen servicemember should ever go unremembered or be forgotten. That is the purpose of Memorial Day, to commemorate and honor those we have lost. However, to name all the fallen from Steubenville in World War I would, I fear, take longer than I would like. Still, some of those who fell bear special mention. Such as Francis McCook, from the family that gave us the “Fighting McCooks” of the Civil War, who was killed in action with the Ohio National Guard’s Company B, 134th Machine Gun Battalion on October 7, 1918. Or Charles Cline, Company K, 11th Infantry, and James McNicol, Company D, 101st Infantry, who were killed in action on November 10, 1918, one day before the war ended. Dewey Minter, Company G, 166th Infantry, killed in action on March 20, 1918, who was decorated with the French Croix de Guerre, for valor. The war touched not only the men, but also the women of Jefferson County, like Nurse Eva Taylor, who died of pneumonia. These are not just names in record books; these are brothers, sons, and fathers of our community, many whose families still live in the area.
I am here to represent the National Guard, our nation’s citizen soldiers. We, and I say “we” with great humility to be represented in their number, we have responded to every crisis our nation has faced, from the Revolution until today. Steubenville has sent her sons and daughters off to foreign lands, and welcomed them home again, both the living and the dead. To be a Citizen Soldier is not to be what some have called, “weekend warriors.” In today’s world, it means to be ready to deploy to wherever our nation needs us and serve alongside our active duty brothers and sisters. Steubenville sent its own detachment of the 1485th Transportation Company in 2003–2004 to Iraq, a place many never expected to see.
Memorial Day is difficult. Mainstream culture overpowers us with advertisements for “Memorial Day sales” and we watch as families take the long weekend for vacations or barbecues. For us, we remember those who are not coming home. Those such as the Soldier who shared the bunk next to me at basic training, William Blount, who was no more than a kid when his vehicle was struck with an improvised explosive device in Mosul, Iraq, in 2010. I will always remember his upbeat and cheerful demeanor, his love of the Army, and the proud way he introduced his young fiancé to us when we graduated from training at Fort Benning, Georgia. At the time he died, she was his wife, and eight months pregnant.
War is terrible. It is not pretty, it is not glorious. It steals from us those we love and respect. But it is necessary. There are those who wish deadly harm to the citizens of our great nation, and they must be stopped, with the same deadly force. Which is why we have today. Should it be a day of mourning, with no barbecues, picnics, or vacations? Never. The generations of fallen soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen stand testament that they, and we, the living, will always fight for these simple, yet remarkable things that make us uniquely American: the Freedom from Fear, as President Franklin Delanore Roosevelt called it. However, we must ensure that from “these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion,” as President Abraham Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address. How will we honor those who died? By living out our lives, as they would have done, by loving our neighbors, by teaching our children to know and honor their memory, by doing good in the world, by seeking to always make the world a better place, by choosing the gentle word over the harsh gesture. We are all creatures in this great world, all members of the human community, no matter what nationality, race, or creed. My great uncle, a World War I veteran, would speak of the German who wounded him, and whom he subsequently killed in the battle, saying, “I killed a mother’s son.” Our fallen are our sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers.
“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.”
Thank you.
