It’s time for America to have a Military Appreciation Month . . ."Yet, our great military, despite the sacrifice of approximately 1 million troops over our nation’s history, gets only two federal holidays: Memorial Day and Veterans Day, and many still work on the latter. Since there are far more awareness months than there are months, it’s time to rationalize them (and heritage months) in order to make room for a new Military Appreciation Month.
‘Greater Love Hath No Man’: The Four Chaplains and the True Meaning of Memorial Day
"The last sight of the ship was unforgettable: The Four Chaplains, arms linked in prayer, standing together on the tilting deck as the Dorchester slipped beneath the waves. They did not die for their own kind. They died for mankind, so that others may live."
"It was just after midnight on February 3, 1943, when the frigid black waters of the North Atlantic swallowed the USAT Dorchester—and with it, four of the most extraordinary men ever to wear the uniform of the United States Army.
"They were not warriors in the conventional sense. They carried no rifles. They stormed no beaches. Yet their sacrifice belongs in the same sacred register as those who fell in service—men like Charles Whittlesey, Butch O’Hare, and John Basilone—whose courage cost them everything.
"Their names—George L. Fox, Alexander D. Goode, John P. Washington, and Clark V. Poling—should be etched in our civic memory, recited alongside the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural. That they are not is a national oversight Memorial Day ought to correct.
"The Dorchester was a converted passenger liner, part of a convoy transporting over 900 American servicemen to a remote Army base in Greenland. Aboard were cooks, medics, engineers, and four chaplains—each of a different faith: Fox, a Methodist minister; Goode, a Jewish rabbi; Washington, a Catholic priest; and Poling, a Dutch Reformed pastor." . . .
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