From Paul Donovan

Monroe

To the Editor:

Once again Memorial Day is nearly here yet what will make this Memorial Day unique will be that it is America’s 250th Anniversary.

It will be unique if we make it unique in not just a day of thanking but taking extra steps in honoring and contemplating the ultimate sacrifice so many men and women gave so that we may enjoy the privileges that we can only enjoy in America.

This Memorial Day should be a day deep contemplation in the past 250 years of the suffering so many veterans endured.

While in the past decades we have had a number of WW2 on up films that have given a good amount exposure to what our veterans have gone through we have forgotten the atrocities that so many endured back the very beginning.

The beginning of a our nation was beyond belief in suffering including bayoneting, mutilating, the overcrowding of disease ridden prisoner ships as high as 70% mortality rate, supply failures that led to some with no shoes in the winter and diseases with nothing but primitive care.

While we struggle to give veterans today the honor they deserve on this our 250th Anniversary we must pay our respects to the first generation of soldiers who suffered in every way and never received a pension or any form of nationwide support only from family and communities.

Most died in poverty after years physical and traumatic suffering.

They fought and suffered for nothing but to pave the way for the birth of a new nation.

This year we should Thank God for them.