Howard William Osterkamp served in the US Army during the Korean War. He was wounded in the leg by shrapnel, but Army doctors misdiagnosed his injury.
He was sent back to the front lines with his leg broken in two places and served there for four months. He spent a total of nine months on the front lines during the conflict and later received the Purple Heart.
Osterkamp is widely credited with a phrase that is especially appropriate today: “All gave some; some gave all.”
As the son and grandson of military veterans, I know something of the sacrifices so many men and women have made to preserve our freedom. Today at 3 p.m., we are asked to pause for the National Moment of Remembrance, a minute of reflection and gratitude for the 1.1 million soldiers from all our wars who died for our nation.
“What the State is there for”
The Memorial Day weekend also marks the beginning of summer. Barbeques and parties dominate the holiday.
Americans will consume 818 hot dogs every second from Memorial Day to Labor Day (seven billion in total). We will spend $1.5 billion on meat and seafood over the weekend. More than forty-two million of us are traveling.
Such activities are a strange way to remember the soldiers who died for our country. We might expect this day to be entirely one of somber reflection.
And yet, the fact that we can spend Memorial Day happily with our families and friends is a significant consequence of the sacrifices we honor today.
C. S. Lewis: “It is easy to think that the State has a lot of different objects—military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life.
“A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden—that is what the State is there…
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