Today is Memorial Day in the U.S., a federal holiday that honors the many who have died in military service. For decades, modern Pagan and Heathen military personnel have worked to have their contributions and their sacrifices equally recognized within military circles. Due to the unyielding efforts, Pagan and Heathen involvement within the armed forces is at a level of visibility and acceptance never before imagined. With that visibility, of course, comes new challenges.
Throughout the year, we highlight many of those triumphs and discuss the obstacles. But today, let us pause to recognize and remember the many who have fallen.
Veterans Ridge at Circle Cemetery [Courtesy Photo]
At Arlington National Cemetery, these fallen soldiers lie side by in a remarkable display of religious diversity within the U.S. armed forces. Baha’is lay beside Jews; Muslims beside Christians; Hindus beside Wiccans. The cemetery offers over 60 religious symbols with which to engrave headstones — some of which may be familiar and others rarely viewed in public spaces. – from “Arlington Cemetery Gravestones Honor America’s Fallen Soldiers Of Every (And No) Faith,” The Huffington Post, Antonia Blumberg
Memorial Day isn’t about veterans like me, who got to come home and go on with their lives. No, Memorial Day is supposed to be all about the soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen who came home in caskets or in body bags. Or who never came home at all, like my father-in-law. They paid the highest possible price to defend this nation, and it trivializes their sacrifice not to make their one day a year just about them. – Blake Kirk, Wiccan Priest
Centuries ago, in Athens, when someone died the body was taken by procession to the burial or cremation site. A family member would say the dead person’s name three times to see if they would answer. It was to show the person was really dead, to bring the reality that they had crossed to the land of the dead and will never be coming back.
The US military does the same thing. They take a final role call of the squad or element the military member belonged to and they call the dead person’s name last. Then they call it again adding in the first name. Then they call it a third time, using the person’s full name. When the person doesn’t respond, it is announced they person is dead and where they died. It’s as powerful a rite now as it was 2 or 3 thousand years ago, which is why it is still done. ” from “Thoughts on Death and Burial,” The Wild Hunt, Cara Schulz
They gave their lives, to [country] and to all of us, and for their own selves they won praises that never grow old, the most splendid of sepulchers—not the sepulcher in which their bodies are laid, but where their glory remains eternal in men’s minds, always there on the right occasion to stir others to speech or to action … I would ask you to count as gain the greater part of your life, in which you have been happy, and remember that what remains is not long, and let your hearts be lifted up at the thought of the fair fame of the dead. – from Pericles’ Funeral Oration dedicated to those lost in the Peloponnesian War.
I learned something from the families: The true cost of grief is beyond politics. It was important to realize an individual life had been lost and people were greatly affected. That loss is so much greater than agreeing or disagreeing with [the] war. – Military photographer Andrew Lichtenstein, as quoted in The New York Times.
![[Public Domain]](https://wildhunt.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/U.S._Marine_Sgt._Katie_Maynard_salutes_as_a_casket_is_lowered_during_a_funeral_ceremony_at_Arlington_National_Cemetery_Va._on_131024-M-FY706-201-500x333.jpg)
[Public Domain]
We here at The Wild Hunt honor our Pagan and Heathen brothers and sisters who have have fallen in the line of duty.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
– Laurence Binyon, “For the Fallen,” originally published in The Times, 1914
Please feel free to post any observances, names, tributes, thoughts, or remembrances you think appropriate on this day.
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Thank you for this. Today, I will take my stack of books out to the Walk of the Fallen Memorial Labyrinth and read all of them — all the US and Coalition dead of the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I will add the last counting beads to the center monument, bringing the total to 8,320. This will include the people killed at Ft. Hood, the four killed in Benghazi, the UN people killed in riots in Afghanistan as a result of a stupid American threatening to burn Korans, and several names of vets who have suicided.
Thank you for this article.
Patrick Dana Stewart (October 21, 1970 – September 25, 2005) was a soldier in the United States Army. He died in combat in Afghanistan when his Chinook helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade while returning to base. Patrick Stewart was a resident of Fernley, Nevada, USA and a practicing Wiccan.
There are two Eric Bogle songs that I always think about at this time.
“No Man’s Land””, aka “Green Fields of France” and “Willie McBride”, ponders what happened to the young man, at whose grave in Flanders, he stands. It refers to WWI. There have been enough people who didn’t realize it was written in 1976 that occasionally it is credited to a man who died in WWI.
The next one, more suited to ANZAC Day in April, is “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda”, written in 1971, and there are almost three dozen covers. It talks about the Australian contingent sent to Gallipoli, and is the memory of an old man, who at 15, had fought in that battle. The song rails against the romanticising of war, and there are some parallels with the Vietnam War demonstrated.
I went to see The Water Diviner, half expecting to hear the song, at least in the credits, but that didn’t happen. The movie is intense in places, but worth seeing.
You can find info about both of these songs on Wikipedia, and several versions of each on YouTube.
Wasting the sacrifice of our dead from war by forgetting them, or what they fought for (even if the reason was a mistake) dishonors them and us. I do take my role as a citizen of the country on whose behalf they fought, whether or not I agree with the “cause”, by being an informed voter and politically active, even if it’s only mail, email, petitions, and occasional calls. I can’t imagine not doing this, as a memorial to their sacrifices.
Let us also work towards ending war, to honor them as well. It’s a hard row to hoe, but worth the doing.
as a agnostic i too like this article.