{"id":30143,"date":"2012-05-28T11:30:34","date_gmt":"2012-05-28T15:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=30143"},"modified":"2012-05-28T11:30:34","modified_gmt":"2012-05-28T15:30:34","slug":"my-thoughts-on-memorial-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=30143","title":{"rendered":"My Thoughts on Memorial Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote a piece for Business Insider which was published today<\/a>. It’s about the memorial at Camp Pendleton and my visit there in 2007. There is a cross there, along with rocks signifying fallen comrades. I’m not a religious person, and the cross is not the real point of the memorial — at least for me. It is about the dog tags, the rocks, the liquor, and the left mementos.<\/p>\n

At the top of the peak, they dropped their heavy packs. They dug out a small site. In a hole close to the edge, they placed the cross. At the base of the cross, they put down their rocks. Their friends would never be forgotten.<\/p>\n

As combat in Iraq and Afghanistan swelled in the following years, the memorial grew. Marines started bringing new rocks to the memorial. A squad from 1\/4 brought up the largest rock at the site for PFC Juan G. Garza. It weighed over fifty pounds. Other Marines brought bottles of liquor, drinking with their fallen brothers and leaving the rest for them at the site. Between rocks, there were dog tags, Purple Hearts, battalion t-shirts, and photos.<\/p>\n

Three of the original seven later died in combat. Their brothers probably carried their rock to the top of the mountain for them.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t constructed by an architect or an artist. The memorial didn\u2019t have tourists coming through it like Arlington Cemetery or the Vietnam Wall. It was a closed site, built and maintained by Marines. Hundreds of rocks had been carried there. Each week, Marines would carry lawn mowers up and groom it.<\/p>\n

After deployments, battalions would go there to honor their fallen warriors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing.<\/a><\/p>\n

Quite inevitably, there are already comments left from dipshits who take issue with the cross and another who compares our fallen friends to nazis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote a piece for Business Insider which was published today. It’s about the memorial at … My Thoughts on Memorial Day<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":624,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veterans-issues","category-war-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/624"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}