The front page of the New York Times yesterday carried the first of several pages of names and brief descriptions of coronavirus dead, one thousand persons in total recognized today out of what will be 100,000 dead by the end of this long weekend. Flags have been at half mast since Friday to honor the coronavirus victims — more of them now than in the Vietnam and Korean War combined. I call them victims because many of them need not have died if this country had mounted a proper pandemic response program, not in bits and pieces, state by state, but rather a full on federal response. The Intensive Care Units (ICUs) in which many died are every bit the battlefields of wartime.
The photo is from my home town’s cemetery in Buffalo Center, Iowa, where Memorial Day is still a day of pomp and ceremony. My father — Dr. James Harrison Sowers — a World War I veteran, is honored for his service by having his name read out with other veterans, followed by a 21 gun salute and the playing of “Taps.” In the half circle of veterans’ crosses, one bears his name. Like Arlington, the Buffalo Center Cemetery is well-tended and a peaceful place: both my mother and father are buried there.
My father (“Doc”) told us the story of Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day and begun three years after the end of the Civil War by Union soldiers, who decorated graves of their comrades with flowers, flags and wreaths. My father was a member of both the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), and from the latter came the tradition of us children offering poppies, made by disabled veterans, to be worn on Memorial Day weekend. One of his favorite poems came from World War I and the celebration of poppies that grew wild on Flanders Field, the only American World War I military cemetery in Belgium, which sits on a battlefield where nearly 370 American soldiers are buried.. The poem is by Dr. John McCrae, Canadian poet, physician, author, artist and soldier who served in World War I.
“ In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”
I wish today that all veterans of wars as well as those who died from the coronavirus rest in peace.