from sharit, for memorial day

shari tamashiro sent me this, which i send to you...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt85ShJGgqI

On this Memorial Day. . .we remember.

[Excerpt from a memorial address given by Chaplain Israel Yost to the 100th Infantry Battalion, October 1947.]

Once, over there, four men came slowly up a trail along which was strewn the debris of war. Our soldiers had fallen, wounded or dead, along that path, dropping rations and arms and equipment in agony or haste. The four were carrying a dead comrade on a litter. It was not so much the weight of their burden as it was the weight of the sorrow in their hearts that made them tread so slowly on their way. Toward them came a lone soldier, of a different division and of a different race (though American). When he noticed the funeral procession he stopped, stepped off the path, removed his helmet, and stood with bowed head as the men bore the dead past him. I shall never forget how that white soldier of the 45^th Division took time to honor one of our dead AJAs; in reverence he stepped off the road to let the dead pass by.

Once again today, as is our custom, we step off the road to let our dead pass by. Each of us will be thinking especially about his own dear son, or husband, or brother, or relative, or friend.

. . .

Now, you who were members of the 100^th, pick out from the ranks of the dead, your own beloved friend. You knew him as a lad, you played with him, and hiked and swam and schooled. He marched with you and sailed with you across the seas. He had the same dislikes and loves as you. He showed you pictures of his girl, or wife and child. He wasn't always sure the higher-ups directed right. . .but in his most sincere of hours he thrilled at all the things for which our nation stands. He planned for all the things we now enjoy, and often said he knew that we would carry on if he should not return. Oh, comrade of our honored dead – or wife, or Dad, or Mom, or sister dear, or brother – all of you who are his kin and bound to him as friends –

when you begin to slide through life instead of climbing.
when you begin to harm instead of helping,
when you begin to curse God instead of praying,
when you being to feel that life is for the one who thinks of self-alone. . .

then pause a while, step off the road, and let the gold-starred soul of your

beloved pass by.

Then, can you break faith with the dead?

. . .

Those worthy soldier-dead need not our words of praise today. They need none of our gold for statues to their fame. They only ask that we keep faith with them, that we shall ne'er forget that they have died with hopes of making this old world a bit more like the place of peace God planned it for.

What if we fail, and live for self, and oft forget to champion right against the powerful wrong? What if we break the faith with these our dead? Then they would beg that we forget mistakes and try again. They know, and we know in our hearts, that is was easier to die upon the battlefield for right than to live day in and day out according to the best within us. That's why it is good for us to hold such services year after year – to bolster up and encourage us to live up to the standards they set by their deaths.

I believe they would even bid us not to mourn for them, for they know that we the living have the harder task of daily fighting on for what is right and good and kind. I know they will forgive us when we fail, if only we will try again to quit ourselves like men fighting for that for which they gave their lives.

When soulless men our high ideals defy,
When our fond hopes and visions start to die,
When selfishness engulfs, let's, you and I,
Step off the road to let the dead pass by.

When human wrongs for right to heaven cry,
If for ideals you e'en may have to die,
To keep your aims in life clean-cut and high,
Step off the road to let the dead pass by.