{"id":57109,"date":"2024-05-27T02:15:01","date_gmt":"2024-05-27T02:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=57109"},"modified":"2024-05-27T02:15:01","modified_gmt":"2024-05-27T02:15:01","slug":"nothing-happy-about-this-holiday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=57109","title":{"rendered":"Nothing ‘happy’ about this holiday"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A good friend of mine this week posted a message that resonates loudly with me, as it should with all Americans.<\/p>\n

Don’t wish David Norris a “happy Memorial Day,” he admonishes us. It is a holiday of commemoration, of honoring those who gave their lives in service to this country.<\/p>\n

Norris told the story of a fellow Marine who died while serving the rest of us. They were good friends and every Memorial Day, he remembers his friend’s sacrifice.<\/p>\n

We should remember and honor all who paid the ultimate price in service to the great nation.<\/p>\n

I served a tour of duty in Vietnam while employed by the U.S. Army for a couple of years in the late 1960s. Every Memorial Day I recall the sacrifice of a young man who was slated to go home after he had extended his ‘Nam tour a couple of times. Jose de La Torre served in the same aviation battalion that I did; he was assigned to a Huey helicopter company and I served in a Mohawk company.<\/p>\n

He took off one day on a mission to drop sone troops off in a landing zone. It was “routine,” or so they thought. The LZ was hot and the enemy was waiting for our ships, De La Torre died that day.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen his name on The Wall. It still fills me with sadness to recall the exuberance of the then-young man who was going home.<\/p>\n

So … let us honor all the men and women who paid the steepest of prices.<\/p>\n

And as my buddy David Norris said, don’t wish anyone a happy Memorial Day.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

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A good friend of mine this week posted a message that resonates loudly with me, as it should with all Americans. Don’t wish David Norris a “happy Memorial Day,” he admonishes us. It is a holiday of commemoration, of honoring those who gave their lives in service to this country. Norris told the story of … Continue reading Nothing ‘happy’ about this holiday<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2997,4784,5041,5057,5116],"class_list":["post-57109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-memorial-day","tag-the-wall","tag-us-army","tag-usmc","tag-vietnam-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57110,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57109\/revisions\/57110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}