May
Service of Tyr
Tyr’s work is more than War. He sees to the well-being of the community. There are many activities that serve Tyr’s aims.
Back in October, I was asked to do the invocation at a gravestone ceremony. My friend Gary is a local historian, among other things. He was able to get the Veterans Administration to provide a gravestone for a Union Civil War veteran who had died in 1911. Private Lorenzo Reynolds had served in the New Jersey Rifle Volunteers during the Civil War. He was buried in Mount Prospect cemetery in Neptune, NJ.
The ceremony included modern veterans, members of a group honoring Civil War veterans, and descendants of Pvt. Reynolds. The music director of one of Neptune’s schools played taps.
Because of the proximity of the event to Halloween, Gary made a point of addressing the cemetery’s historic importance. “This is a place of reverence and respect for those who have gone before us. There are no vampires and none of the headstones say, ‘Boo!’” He stressed the importance of the cemetery as a place of remembrance to honor those who have gone before us.
Why do we make such a fuss? Because it is important to recognize the efforts of others who have prepared the way before us. It is especially important to acknowledge the sacrifice of those who put their lives on the line. So it is that veterans put flags on the graves of fallen veterans before Memorial Day. They are not forgotten.
In our appreciation of Wyrd and the flow of time, we see three stages: past, present and future. The past is a line to the present, and we can follow that line into that which will be. The past is the aiming point, a sort of marker that allows us to plot our course forward. We need to recognize that the past is not some dry page of a history book. It is real, and the efforts of those before us contributed greatly to how we live today. Part of the service of Tyr is to remember those who have gone before. Their work lives on in us.
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What of Confederate veterans? I like the way the US Army and Navy handled it. They accepted the Confederate military legacy as belonging to the U.S. Army and Navy. Recently, when someone tried to sell the bell of a sunken Confederate ship, the US Navy stepped in. The Navy said that the bell was a memorial to the fallen sailors on that ship, not a trinket for Civil War collectors. Union or Confederate, the responsibility for the honor due those sailors was accepted by the US Navy.
Some think it “politically correct” to denigrate the service of Confederate soldiers, Marines and sailors because of the slavery issue. That is wrong! Those Confederate fighting men are veterans who put their lives on the line for what they believed. As far as I am concerned, they are American veterans. All Americans can be proud of the courage and sacrifice of these brave men, just as we are proud of these who served in other wars. This is one nation, indivisible, and those Confederate veterans are as much ours as their Union counterparts.
Keep in mind, this is ME talking. I’m the one who thinks the Holy Trinity of the 19th Century is Sherman, Sheridan and Grant. I’m the one who said that Sherman should have been more thorough on his march to the sea. I also say that you do not have to like the cause, but you have to respect the men who fought. Had I been asked to handle the invocation for the grave of a Confederate soldier, I would have agreed to do it without hesitation. Do not let the current “PC” trend steer you wrong. A Confederate veteran is an American veteran, and he deserves the respect.
