I ran across this piece because Paul Fussell died this week and posted it because it was so shockingly enlightening. Nothing to do with Memorial Day; apart from not keeping track of these things, I'm Canadian and we do our remembering in November.
If some people voted it up for Memorial Day, so much the better for an impassioned piece of good writing. Fussell obviously deserves to be better known.
The US celebrates 'Veteran's Day' on November 11th, which coincides with Remembrance Day (or Armistice Day), though it's one of those holidays that are more of a footnote than anything else. Memorial Day apparently holds a much older heritage. According to Wikipedia:
[...] it originated after the American Civil War to commemorate
the fallen Union soldiers of the Civil War [...] By the 20th
century Memorial Day had been extended to honor all Americans
who have died in all wars.
If some people voted it up for Memorial Day, so much the better for an impassioned piece of good writing. Fussell obviously deserves to be better known.