Memorial Day Speech

I (Conner) had the privilege of giving the address at the local American Legion post's Memorial Day ceremony. My speech follows.

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Toward Obscurity

Good morning, friends, neighbors, and I extend a warm welcome especially those of you who have served in the military and their families. To our Gold Star families: the debt we owe you can never be repaid. Thank you.

Joining the Armed Forces is a rare thing today. About a half percent of our nation’s population is actively serving at present. Veterans account for about 7.3 percent of our population. It’s a small cohort. And it’s not surprising really. Aside from the danger of dying, entering the military runs counter to one of culture’s biggest values: getting attention. How many of us in this room have our  social media pages which broadcast to the whole world, “This is me!” Whereas many of us are naturally inclined to seek prominence as individuals, military life demands conformity. Whereas many of us want to be in places where we gain notoriety, military life sends us to places no one’s ever heard of. In short, military life obscures the individual and focuses attention on the mission.

Many of you veterans have memories of training, of the push-ups and the sit-ups and the endless drills. In training, you don’t want to be the one who gets attention. You don’t want to be the one Sarge pulls out of the ranks to have a little one-on-one time with. You learned quickly to play the game, to march in step, to dress right. What a gift that was.

You see, the men and women we honor on Memorial Day, they were not, most of them, remarkable standouts. They were not, most of them, seekers of glory. The members of our Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Marines who died fighting mostly did so in relative obscurity. Even those who would receive Congressional Medals of Honor are hardly remembered by most Americans.

I don’t point this out to bring shame on our history teachers. I was one. Rather, I want to highlight the obscurity, the utter dearth of notoriety given to the individuals who died fighting for our nation, to honor them. I want to honor those men and women who were just doing there jobs, day in and day out. I want to memorialize those people who will never have a movie made about their noble sacrifices. It’s easy to honor the bold who willingly seek to put their lives on the line; I want to also memorialize the ones who couldn’t find another job and so got into the military as their last option, only to find that it would take their lives. I want us to memorialize the kids who saw the Reserve or the Guard as a way to get tuition assistance for college but were never able to use their education in the civilian world.

Those 19-year-old kids, those lifers who were so close to retirement with their pension but died just beforehand, the cooks and maintenance engineers and recent college grads, the husbands and wives and fathers and mothers, the sons and daughters who died fighting—how can we honor their ignoble, obscure deaths? How can we honor their twisted bodies in battlefields and ships and planes and tanks? How can you and I truly memorialize their service in a way that is fitting?

Perhaps the best way is by admitting what each of these had to admit when they put on their uniforms: that a mission is valuable even if it doesn’t give us any recognition. An ordinary life without recognition can still be part of something glorious. The smallest contribution to a righteous cause can be the difference maker.

A soldier who had to learn this the hard way was one who did have a certain appreciation for attention—General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur actually retired from the US Army before WWII and became the Commander of the Philippine Army, preparing them for the Japanese invasion that was then quite likely. One of his tasks as Commander was to design his own uniform, and he stopped just short of looking like a peacock. Yes, MacArthur loved attention. But later, when FDR called him up and brought him back in as the American commander in the Pacific theater, Gen. MacArthur had to make decisions that would lead not to glory but to humility.

When he was defending the Philippines against the Japanese invasion in WWII, MacArthur quickly realized that his forces were going to have to surrender and that the best thing he could do was slow that down so more troops could muster down in Australia. MacArthur himself had to set up a safe headquarters in a cave far away from the front lines where his troops were being bombed night and day, and he earned the insulting nickname of “Dugout Doug” for his efforts. The man who had taken so much pride in designing his own gaudy uniform as the Chief of the Philippine Army now had to literally bury himself in obscurity to get his job done and safely command his troops. Eventually, he had to escape on a tiny motorboat so he could be available to command elsewhere. General MacArthur had to seek obscurity to accomplish his mission.

And you have to wonder what he felt as he sat there in that boat, zipping along in the Pacific. Did he regret his decision and wish he had stood, like Custer, fighting vainly to the death in a battle he had no chance of winning? There would have been some personal glory in that. But his mission was greater than he was, and he was willing to putter away into potential humiliation and obscurity. His willingness to put his glory aside led to great advances later in the Pacific theater. By turning away from personal glory, MacArthur became part of something more glorious.

So many have made that decision, and we mark their graves with little flags once a year. What if we went further? What if we learned their lesson and sought to follow where they lead--into obscure lives spent in greater causes—the mission of our God’s Kingdom, the peace of our community, the care for the sick and the orphaned and the widowed? What if we learned that the way up is down, that the way to exaltation is humility, that the way to a throne is a cross?

I wonder who here has the guts, the temerity, to give up the quest for attention and become another unsung hero. Who will march bravely but without bravado down the quiet road of obscurity? Who will sing, “You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road” knowing that the vocation God has called you to, far away from the lights of fame and the glory of the world, is exactly the way the Kingdom of God comes?

I had the privilege of training under a Special Forces Chaplain. He is a father of seven, and when he puts on his dress blues, his decorations cover so much of his uniform that you wonder how he had time to achieve so much and ever be alone with his wife. He was talking to a bunch of us lieutenants once, young men and women just starting our military careers, and he said something I’ll always remember.

“It’s easy to find these ribbons impressive,” he said. “But the more I’m impressed by them, the worse I become. I wish instead of saying what I’d achieved they all said soli Deo gloria.” That’s Latin for “To God alone be the glory.”

And when everything is said and done, when we no longer see the United States as our nation but gladly stand in another kingdom, the Kingdom of God, the One who died in obscurity on a cross outside Jerusalem will be the one who receives all the glory. These men and women we honor today point us to Him and invite us to follow where he has led—down a narrow, humble, obscure path, to the land of victory, glory, and resurrection. Thank you.