Veterans gather for original Memorial Day

Long after all the baseball games had been watched, the barbecue grills cooled off and the camping gear stowed away from Memorial Day weekend, the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3596 gathered at the Plains Cemetery for their annual Memorial Day ceremony.

The Plains post met at the cemetery Friday, May 30, the original Memorial Day. About 25 people attended the ceremony held near the flag pole. The Post 3596’s Honor Guard and Ladies Auxiliary lined up with armed forces flags and several American flags as Doug Browning, the post commander, presided over the ceremony.

The 36-year-old was wearing a replica Army uniform from War World II worn by the 101st Airborne Division, which parachuted into Normandy for the D-Day Invasion. Browning, who is a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army reserves and served in the Middle East in Operation Enduring Freedom from February to September 2002, and from July 2003 to May 2004 read from “General Order No. 11,” which was written by Union General John Logan for the first Memorial Day in 1868.

“Let us, then, at the time appointed gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them the dear old flag they saved from dishonor; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from dishonor; let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us,” Browning said.

“Our presence here is in solemn comemoration of all these men, an expression of our tribute to their devotion to duty, to their courage and patriotism. By their services on land, on sea and in the air they have made us their debtors, for the flag of our nation still flies over a land of free people,” Browning said.

After Browning read the speech, a wreath, a symbol of remembrance, a white carnation, a symbol of purity, and a rose, a tribute of devotion and everlasting remembrance were placed on the grave. The Ladies Auxiliary then placed a blue carnation on the grave.

Polly Gill, who spent 10 years in the Army, said a divine blessing as the post’s chaplain. After the prayer, Don Brown, a retired member of the U.S. Air Force and a former post commander, played “Taps,” with the help of a small electronic recorder in a bugle.

The group then left for the bridge over the Clark Fork River between Plains and the Sanders County Fairgrounds. At the bridge, Bob Williamson, who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and the Korean War, and Joe Eisenbrandt, who served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, tossed a wreath off of the bridge to pay tribute to the veterans who lost their lives at sea.

“We are assembled here to pay tribute to the men and women of our country who have served in the United States Armed Forces who fought in defense of this country and for the preservation of our way of life and who lost their lives at sea,” Browning said. “Those men and women are worthy of far greater recognition than mere words or markers. The sacrifice they made and the deeds they performed shall be written in history and shall remain alive in our memories for generations to come.”

Post 3596 always holds the ceremony on the original Memorial Day, which was initially designated as May 30 beginning in 1868 by Logan, commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. At that time, flowers were placed at the grave sites of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery, previously the home site of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. During the war, President Abraham Lincoln seized Lee’s home and turned the grounds into a burial place for the Union dead.

According to government archives, the South refused to recognize that day as a memorial day until after World War I. In 1971, Congress voted to celebrate Memorial Day on the last Monday of May. A petition by a man named David Merchant has been circulating the country since 1999 to restore May 30 as the legally recognized Memorial Day.