Tag Archives: Memorial Day

‘The Mansions of the Lord’

As you may recall, I have a fondness for this “hymn” from Mel Gibson’s movie, “We Were Soldiers.” In spite of its faulty orthodoxy. So sue me.

Yesterday I drove down to Kenyon, my home town, for a memorial service at a country church. A motorcycle group in the area does an honor ride every year for local people killed in action. This one was at the grave of a young man I graduated high school with, who died in Vietnam at the age of 19.

Gordie and I moved in different social circles (he was popular). But my brothers and I spent an afternoon with him and some other guys one summer afternoon, it must be going on 60 years ago now. Just walking the railroad tracks, wandering the woods, messing around by the river. Nothing illegal or dangerous. Just an easy summer day for country boys. Could even have been Memorial Day, I suppose. The woods we wandered were “Monkey Valley,” as we called it, a small river valley I renamed “Troll Valley” for a couple of my novels.

‘The Mansions of the Lord’

I always post “The Mansions of the Lord” on Memorial Day, because no other song I know expresses it like that one does. It doesn’t work theologically, but even I have to just go with my heart sometimes.

As I wrote in The Year of the Warrior, playing fast and loose with theology in my own right:

“It’s strange to die this way, and me a Christian. If I were heathen yet, I’d know that Odin would welcome me to Valhalla. What welcome has Christ for a warrior, Father?”

I had no quick answer, and Moling must have seen my trouble, because he asked what the boy had said. I told him.

“Tell him I’ve had a dream about Heaven,” said Moling. “The teachers tell us that the Beloved lives outside Time itself. He goes back and forth in it when He wills. And when we go to be with Him, we too will be outside Time.

“It seemed to me in my dream that at the last day the Beloved called together all the great warriors who had been brave and merciful, and who had trusted in His mercy, and He mustered them into a mighty army, and He said to them, ‘Go forth for Me now, My bonny fighters, and range through Time, and wherever there is cruelty and wickedness that makes the weak to suffer, and faithful to doubt My goodness, wherever the children are slain or violated, wherever the women are raped or beaten, wherever the old are threatened and robbed, then take your shining swords and fight that cruelty and wickedness, and protect my poor and weak ones, and do not lay down your weapons or take your rest until all such evil is crushed and defeated, and the right stands victorious in every place and every time. We will not empty Hell even with this, for men love Hell, but I made a sweet song at the beginning, My sons, and though men have sung it foul we will make it sweet again forever.’”

I said these words to Halvard in Norse, and he died smiling.

The Christian Air We Breathe, a Memorial Day Story, and Blogroll Links

I love discussions that delve into how the whole world has changed under the influence of Christianity. Speaking to unbelievers, Glen Scrivener writes, “You already hold particularly ‘Christian-ish’ views, and the fact that you think of these values as natural, obvious, or universal shows how profoundly the Christian revolution has shaped you.”

Scrivener has a new book, The Air We Breathe, in which he discusses how all manner of modern ideals have Christian origins, and when debating Christian speakers, atheists and other non-Christians will assume Christian positions on their way to undermining Christian principles. Black Lives Matter couldn’t exist as a popular American concept brought up in many arguments over human dignity without the foundation of God’s created image so many assume today (despite explicitly rejecting it, as some do). It’s marvelous.

Movies: The state of cinema today (via Prufrock)
“We are in the present losing more movies from the past faster than ever before. It seems like we aren’t, but the mere disappearance of physical media is already having corporations curating what we watch, faster for us,” Guillermo Del Toro said.

A Memorial Day Story: Elliot Ritzema heard from his grandpa via the marginal notes in Citizen Soldiers. “When Ambrose wrote, ‘The Ninth Tactical Air Force had a dozen airstrips in Normandy by this time,’ my grandpa added, We were one of these airstrips, 36th Fighter Group, 32nd Service Group.”

The Hobbit in Bears: Is this is a case of life imitating art?

Photo: Big Ole, Alexandria, Minnesota, 2001. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

For Memorial Day

Color Guard of the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

Look at these guys. How old do you think they are? They enlisted them pretty young in those days, and a lot of boys lied about their ages to get in. Now they’re Civil War soldiers, an occupation Bruce Catton described as “more dangerous than anything we know about today.” No small chance of getting shot, and the risk of dying of accident or disease was twice as high.

These are the images that make us pause. Which is good. These guys paid the price so we could have the freedom to call America a racist, Nazi hell hole today.

We ought to ponder these images.

But it’s wrong, I think, to stop there. That’s what I dislike about the Vietnam War memorial in Washington. No disrespect meant – I know it’s a profoundly meaningful place for many people. But it’s the first war memorial in America that ever just said – “Men died, and these are their names.” Nothing about the aspirations they fought for. Nothing about the cause.

That’s understandable, of course. By the time the monument was built, America had decided there was no cause.

That, I think, is the greatest dishonor.

Maybe –very likely – I know nothing. I never went to war – avoided the draft for Vietnam. But I don’t believe the Narrative we’ve seen in every war movie made since Vietnam (with a couple exceptions, like We Were Soldiers), that all soldiers fight unwillingly, and take drugs and commit atrocities to dull the pain. A lot of guys reenlisted for Vietnam. I choose to believe that a lot of them did it, at least in part, because they believed in the war. Believed they were fighting to prevent the horrors that did in fact come to pass, after America abandoned its South Vietnamese allies.

One of my college textbooks stated baldly that old men start wars so that the young men will be killed, and then those old men can take the young women.

Somebody actually thought that was worth putting in a book.

Young men don’t cling to life like old men do. Young men race fast cars, and climb sheer mountain walls, and blow stuff up while drinking, because they want to face death, to show it what they’ve got. War disillusions them quickly, I have no doubt. But those young men in that picture had something more than youth. They had pride. They were warriors.

I think we should remember that when we think of them. They were not mere victims.

These honored dead

As advertised, I was at Fort Snelling National Cemetery on Saturday morning, helping to dedicate a memorial to the men of the 99th Infantry Battalion (Separate), a World War II commando unit organized and trained for an invasion of Norway. Most of its members were either Norwegian merchant sailors stranded by the Occupation, or Norwegian-American boys. Requirements were Norwegian heritage, ability to speak the language, and the ability to ski.

Although the invasion never happened as such, they participated in commando actions (some of them became part of the legendary OSS), and participated in the battle for Europe. The man in the grave above died in 1944, probably in Belgium, where the unit saw fierce fighting.

I was asked to read an invocation for the ceremony, and then I helped place battalion flags on the graves of all the 99th members buried in the cemetery. A couple of my Viking friends came too, and I thank them. It was a moving occasion. No 99th veterans were present, but a couple of their widows were there, along with some descendants.

Memorial Day

When it comes to Memorial Day, I always seem to perambulate back to “The Mansions of the Lord,” because it just gets me right here. This version includes a lot of Ronald Reagan, so if you don’t care for that, there are other blogs in the web. Have a good day.

I want to post a photo from Saturday at Fort Snelling, but that will have to wait because the picture file is taking forever to appear in Dropbox.

I just finished a big translation job, and I have another smaller one I need to get at today. And that’s good. Because I’m a hard-working man with a vibrant life, not a fat old bachelor with odd hobbies, as I might appear to some.

To all survivors of fallen heroes, may the Lord be with you, today and every day.

Memorial Day

“Beasts die,
Kinsmen die,
Oneself shall likewise die;
But the glory of a name
Shall never die
In honoured posterity.”

(From the Icelandic poem “Voluspaa,” as translated by me in Viking Legacy.)

Memorial Day 2017

On Memorial Day, it is customary to remind people, in the midst of their barbecuing, to take a moment to remember the sacrifices made by soldiers in many wars, so that we might enjoy our freedom.

I think it would be more appropriate, this year, to take the ashes from our barbecues, strew them on our heads, dress in sackcloth, fall to our knees, and beg forgiveness for the uses to which we’ve put that freedom.