There is no "happy" in a true Memorial Day. We sometimes say they made the ultimate sacrifice. We talk at times as though those that died were willing to die and lose sight that these men and women didn't want to die in the battlefield.

We ignore the later wars when conscripts or draftees didn't even want to be in the battlefield. Or those that lost their lives in Vietnam defending an ungrateful Vietnamese people that had no love for the Americans or the Vietcong. They were mostly enlisted men.

They were high school graduates. They weren't graduates of the any military academies. Many had no choice but to serve and be sent into the jungles of Vietnam.

I don't hold a leftist view of the Vietnam War nor do I scorn those that participated in the Vietnam War. I still have a somewhat "my country right or wrong" perspective yet sometimes I see these days in frustration at times.