Happy Memorial Day

But what does that really mean? Happiness? Bar-B-Ques? Picnics? The beginning of Summer? Families and friends? Memorial Day is celebrated in many ways but often the intent, the importance, and the pain and sorrow it has brought are often avoided or forgotten!

Memorial Day, begun in 1868, is a federal holiday in the United States for honoring and mourning the military personnel who had died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.

For many years I would post a photo on Facebook trying to commemorate the day and make a comment or two. But it took many years and perhaps a maturity that comes with age, to be able to say (hopefully without offending anyone) "I support our troops and those who have sacrificed their lives on our behalf ... but I DO NOT support war in any way for any reason."

Last night I got to thinking as I drifted off to sleep, and I get most of my ideas for these posts from that period of the day, about the number of deaths due to war, not only soldiers but also civilians. This thinking is paired, I am sure, with all the deaths we have been hearing about due to COVID 19 and more to come.

What is war? War is defined as an active conflict that has claimed more than 1,000 lives. Has the world ever been at peace? Of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history.

Why do we go to war? A question well worth asking but not going to be addressed here :-)

How many people have died in war? At least 108 million people were killed in wars in the twentieth century. Estimates for the total number killed in wars throughout all of human history range from 150 million to 1 billion. 

To use a comparison I previously used in a post about COVID 19, the common yellow school bus we are used to seeing holds approximately 100 seats. To transport the dead of twentieth-century wars, it would take a line of one million and eighty thousand yellow busses. 

To transport the dead from the high range of people killed throughout all of human history, there would be a highway of ten million yellow busses.

And that is not to count all those who died as civilians or not directly but as the result of war.

Again, I say, "I support our troops and those who have sacrificed their lives on our behalf ... but I DO NOT support war in any way for any reason."