FOR THE LADIES ON MEMORIAL DAY

Men get most of the attention on military holidays even it’s not Memorial Day For Men, or Male Veteran’s Day.

Those days include women, but mostly as a second thought, and it’s military women.

Please remember the men and women who died in uniform. They’ve earned our respect from the Civil War to Afghanistan.

Young men directed by old men carried American colors across every continent, then came home.

That’s where it got interesting.

American warriors faced the Hun, the Jerries, Italians, Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, Iraq, and the ‘stans, but the home front was the greatest battle of all.

Give thanks to the women this Memorial Day. They won the battle for the rest of us.

When Johnny sailed home from Europe and the Pacific following WWII, they showed up as world champions. They’d taken down the greatest evils ever turned loose on mankind.

Who knew the concept of total war included death camps and tortuous medical experimentation? That a peaceful, gentle nation like Japan would go so far to the dark side you wonder if they’ve ever really made it back to the table of civilized behavior.

There’s something about using kids for bayonet practice and having military victories described as rape, like the Rape of Nanking, that leaves doubts.

From historyplace.com:

In December of 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army marched into China’s capital city of Nanking and proceeded to murder 300,000 out of 600,000 civilians and soldiers in the city. The six weeks of carnage would become known as the Rape of Nanking and represented the single worst atrocity during the World War II era in either the European or Pacific theaters of war.

The American soldiers came home after ending a war that included a long list of horrors.

They saved the world from a future of concentration camps and rampage. These were hard men trying to put their war in the rear view mirror and they found tough women more than happy to help.

The Baby Boom started in 1946. Young families found their way with proper guidance, also known as momma.

The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 helped.

What man could resist their message: “You’re going to college on the G.I. Bill, not hanging around a garage and smoking with the rest of your loser friends. You’re gonna get a degree, then a good job, and we’re moving into one of those Levittown houses. You got me, soldier?

“Our kids will have a yard and a dog, not a street with a bunch of mini-moochers laying around the stoop. They’ll have a swing set to play on instead of a fire escape. This family is moving up, mister. We’re done with the laundry mat. We’ll have our own washer and dryer. That’s the plan. Any questions?”

President Roosevelt had a plan to give America a new deal.

General Eisenhower had a plan to get to France.

General MacArthur had a plan to return.

General Marshall had a plan for post-war Europe.

American women had a plan, too. And they changed the world for everyone.

Boomerpdx says, “You rule.”