5/30/2011:
An older editor once wrote, “What does Memorial Day mean to America? Crowds hurrying into packed ball parks – to crowded open air stadiums where automobile races are being held – to open-air boxing matches – to field meets, rowing regattas, whatnot. What will Memorial Day of the future mean to these frivolous pleasure seekers, who now find Memorial Day nothing but a holiday in which to seek their favorite amusement?”
While this is a question we can ask ourselves today, it was especially true when it was posed on Memorial Day in 1918, for a long period of isolationism and peace had diminished the true meaning of the day. The Grand Army of the Republic still carried out the traditional services each year, but the number of men who fought wearing the Blue or the Gray in the Civil War of the 1860s was growing increasingly fewer. Fifty years had passed, and the valiant effort to save the Union had dimmed in the minds of the general public, remaining vivid only in the minds of an aging few. Thankfully, North Dakota lost only eighteen men in the Spanish-American War, so as one editor wrote, “The meaning of the day has been lost to the younger generations who have no one resting under colors consecrated to our dead of other wars.”
But with the Great War raging in Europe, the meaning of Memorial Day was becoming only too clear. Families waited anxiously each day as the army casualty lists were published. At first, there was only a trickle of names of young men and women from North Dakota who sacrificed their lives on the battlefields, but by the war’s end, the list had swelled to over seven hundred.
For a younger generation that watched their classmates go off to war, and who watched the Blue Stars on the service flags replaced by the Gold Stars representing a fallen soldier, Memorial Day would take on a more personal meaning. A new generation would remember the sacrifices these people made and a new generation of veterans would return home to silently endure the horrific memories of wartime in those dark and bloody days.
Dakota Datebook written by Jim Davis
Sources:
The Bismarck Daily Tribune May 30, 1918
The Bismarck Weekly Tribune May 31, 1918