Memorial Day

Afghanistan 2011.

Yesterday was Monday.  It was a Bank Holiday in the UK.  In the United states it was Memorial Day.  Memorial Day is a United States holiday observed on the last Monday of May that is the American equivalent of Remembrance Day.  On November 11th the US have Veterans Day, which is slightly different.  Memorial Day actually used to be known as Decoration Day and was first observed by freed Southern Slaves in South Carolina in 1865, to remember the fallen Union soldiers of the Civil War. The recognition of the fallen victims slowly grew to honour all Union soldiers and it was extended after World War I to honour all Americans who have died in all wars. Sadly, Memorial Day in the US now often marks the start of the summer vacation season and, what began as a ritual of remembrance and reconciliation after the Civil War, has become increasingly devoted to shopping and national sporting events. 

Here in Kabul at 0930 every morning there is a NATO briefing session.  Every Monday, at the end of the brief, we all stand to attention and a presentation is played showing pictures of all the dead Coalition soldiers.  To accompany each image someone reads out the name, rank and age of each casualty. There were a lot of casualties this week.  The Americans lost the equivalent of one soldier every day this month.  The toll doesn't end there.  This Monday, this Memorial Day, we had a two minute silence and the US also remembered soliders who died by their own hands since returning from Afghanistan. Nationally, the number of those who've committed suicide on returning from operations, nearly doubled from 80 in 2009 to 145 last year.  Almost all of them were from the Natuional Guard and Army Reserve, the equivalent of our Territorial Army.  The two minute silence yesterday was particularly poignant.  I am going to use somebody elses words here because mine are simply not adequate enough.  The words come from the First Two Minute Silence held in London on 11 November 1919 which was reported in the Manchester Guardian on 12 November 1919:

"The first stroke of eleven produced a magical effect. The tram cars glided into stillness, motors ceased to cough and fume, and stopped dead, and the mighty-limbed dray horses hunched back upon their loads and stopped also, seeming to do it of their own volition. Someone took off his hat, and with a nervous hesitancy the rest of the men bowed their heads also. Here and there an old soldier could be detected slipping unconsciously into the posture of 'attention'. An elderly woman, not far away, wiped her eyes, and the man beside her looked white and stern. Everyone stood very still ... The hush deepened. It had spread over the whole city and become so pronounced as to impress one with a sense of audibility. It was a silence which was almost pain ... And the spirit of memory brooded over it all"