With Honor, We Remember
Celebrating "A Soldier's Story" - The Unveiling of the National World War One Memorial
To Remember With Honor
This is my grandfather, Allen Morrison (1886-1981). In 1917, after working ten years as an attorney in his uncle’s law firm in Asheville, NC, he enlisted in the US Army serving with 60th Artillery, Coast Artillery Corps.
The regiment was sent to France to fight with the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front in World War I, participating in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive armed with 24 155 mm GPF guns. It was demobilized on 24 February 1919.
My grandfather returned home with damaged hearing. Not once did he ever speak with me about his war experience. I am sorry that I didn’t have the foresight to ask before his passing. However, by the time that I was old enough to do so, Grandfather’s hearing and eyesight were almost totally gone.
As I learned of the new World War One memorial, my thoughts went to my grandfather, who did not have to serve but did so voluntarily. He was 31 years old when he enlisted. He returned home to start a new life that merits our family’s love and respect.
Honoring A Soldier’s Story
Today, September 13, 2024, a memorial to the US service men and women who served during the First World War is to be unveiled in Washington, D.C.
The First World War, branded as “the war to end all wars,” is the global conflict that we are still in the midst of. The war was the death-knell of the European aristocracy as national leaders. It ushered in the modern movement of centralized global governance. We are now at the point of either it’s final ascension to authoritarian dominance or the end of leadership as we have come to know it.
My father, E.R. Brenegar, Jr. (1924-2010) served in the Second World War.
He served in the Army Air Corps as a turret gunner on a B-29 in the Pacific theater. His bomber group firebombed targets in Japan.
He said little about his war experience until the final decade of his life. He left us a record of his missions flown. I accompanied him in 2009 to his bomber group reunion where I listened to him in conversation with the few men remaining from his group on Guam about their lives during the war and after.
The overwhelming impression of the men and women who I have met who have served in wartime is their humility and sense of honor. Many of them suffered greatly They recognize that they served a purpose that was not their purpose, but of those who are the leaders of the country. In their service, we can see the distinction between service to country and to a political ideology. The challenge for us right now is to see war in the context of human life, rather than as an exercise in global political strategy.
The Reality of War
Memorials are important, not because they glorify war, but because they humanize it. This is necessary in a time when war is conducted as the business of politics. Death is the product of this business. After a century of the development of global institutions of governance and finance, the result is a cult-like belief in the strategic value of war for meeting political goals. When you hear the word “depopulation” used, think this person believes that mass deaths may be necessary to achieve a specific political end. This is the authoritarian faith of modern political governance. People are expendable because they are inefficient and uncontrollable. Yes, we are. We are also noble, honorable, and sacrificial for the appropriate reason.
People are the expendable assets who fight the wars for “the global force of centralized institutions of governance and finance.” It is attributed to Stalin, who famously said,
“One death is a tragedy; a million deaths a statistic.”
In the modern world we scale to the masses, one size fits all, and so our modern mechanisms of death are designed for everyone. See how the logic leads to a rational call for nuclear war. We hear global leaders talking about depopulating one billion people or more. How do you do that? China and India, each have almost a billion and a half people. You can see how when mass death becomes something of a religious doctrine, people and nations are expendable. We are watching this now in Ukraine and the Middle East.
I think about this in the context of the wars fought over the past century. Men and women volunteer or are conscripted. They leave their jobs, their families, their friends and their communities, to go fight. The loss is not just on the battlefield, but back home in the bedroom, the workplace, and under bridges for the lost.
Living Memorials
If you ever find yourself near Verdun, France, I encourage you to visit the Battle of Verdun Memorial. One of the exhibits is a unique video display of sound and image. This segment from it is very graphic.
If you visit the memorial sites in eastern France and the area around Ypres, Belgium, you will realize how detached we are from the real experience of war. As I look at Sabin Howard’s memorial sculpture, I realize that he is trying to present to us the human dimension of war. I look forward to visiting it soon.
My favorite World War One memorial is The Missing of the Somme Memorial in Theipval, France.
The offensive began on July 1, 1916. At the end of the day, the British army suffered 57,470 casualties with 19,240 of those killed. The battle was so fierce that the dead could not be identified. The Missing of the Somme became a point of remembrance for British soldiers every since.
During my first visit there in 2014, I met three military pensioners from the Chelsea home in London. They were in the dress uniforms to honor the lost from their regiments. They visit the memorial a couple times a year. With them that day was a military brass band playing marches off in the distance. The human experience of this place of horrifying death was tangible to al who were there that day
Deserving of Honor
The men and women who fight our wars deserve our honor. Thanks seems to be too casual, and to make the assumption that war is like a child’s game that we can walk away without effect.
I am thinking of this as the unveiling ceremony takes place tonight. My mind goes to all those writers who suffered during the First World War. In particular, JRR Tolkein who turned his own trauma into tales of Hobbits, Ents, Elves, and human beings that inspire us today. He wrote,
One has personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.
JRR Tolkein
To memorialize is to remember. To remember with honor does not validate way as a necessary good, but rather the sacrifice and suffering of those who served.