Civil War reenactment on the Ocean Grove beach, 2002. Another way that the heroes are remembered. Paul Goldfinger photograph. ©

Decoration Day 2018

falls on the last Monday of May, the day

Americans, since 1866, lay

flowers on the graves of The Fallen In wars,

since the Civil War.

        The Fallen, father says,

were felled by bullet, shrapnel, even Friendly

Fire or a heart attack on The Battlefield

or in a Medivac or, unsaveable

from grievous wounds, in a hospital.

             To

them, draftees or volunteers, we owe what’s

left of our liberty, signified by

The Liberty Bell and in New York Harbor

by The Statue of Liberty.

     What French sculptor

today would gift us with this beacon to those

masses yearning to breathe free?

BAND OF BROTHERS THEME  (HM Royal Marines band)