A Military Chaplain Remembers the True Meaning of Memorial Day| National Catholic Register

COMMENTARY: Memorial Day isn’t about veterans like me — it’s about the fallen. From combat casualties to tragic training deaths, their memory deserves our full attention.

When I was a kid, Memorial Day marked the unofficial start of summer — a welcome three-day weekend that arrived just before our long school break began. It was hard not to love.

As I got older, I began to see it as a patriotic holiday marked by parades, retail sales, and increasingly, gestures of gratitude to veterans.

But today, after having spent the last 25 years as a military chaplain, Memorial Day has come to mean something quite different to me.

To begin with, it’s important to acknowledge that Memorial Day is not the same as Veterans Day. While those of us who serve, or who have served, appreciate the gratitude of our fellow Americans, today is not a day to thank a veteran. Today is a day to mourn and remember those who never came home from their tours of duty — those who died in the line of duty, whether it was from combat, or other “non-combat-related injuries.”

During peacetime, “non-combat-related injuries” occur with frequency and include things like suicides, mishaps and training accidents. Such deaths are often treated as “less heroic,” and can leave the surviving family members and friends with a hollow feeling.

One such training accident that I’m intimately familiar with was the crash of a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter on March 10, 2015, in the waters off of Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, killing all 11 people (three from the Army, 8 Marines) on board. I was the head chaplain there at the time and my team worked around the clock for two straight weeks, helping with the recovery of remains, sleeping in the makeshift morgue, consoling the survivors, and loading the caskets of the fallen onto flights for repatriation and burial. Those were some of the most tragic days of my military career.

Then there were the many combat-related deaths I responded to in both Iraq and Afghanistan. When I was deployed to Iraq in 2006, I got to know a young airman whose job was as an aircraft mechanic. He was 22 and Jewish, and because our small chapel team didn’t have a Jewish chaplain, he would regularly come to me to talk about his problems, or just to philosophize about life.

When we both finished our deployment, I returned to my home base in Washington, D.C., and he returned to his in South Dakota. A few times he even called me from South Dakota to check in on me and let me know how things were going. Eventually, we lost touch.

Fast forward to 2008, when I arrived in Afghanistan for the first day of a six-month deployment. Dropped off, with all my gear, at the chapel, I had to find my way — finding a room, a bunk, and settling in on my own.

As I stepped into the chapel to look around, there was a memorial service going on. The soldiers present were in deep grief. I looked down at the printed program for the service, and there on the cover was Senior Airman Jonathan Yelner — my “buddy” from Iraq. He had been killed the day before when his Humvee ran over an improvised explosive device. He was only 24 years old. I now wear a memorial bracelet on my wrist with his name and his date of death, to honor his life, his service and his passing.

As a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, I am also reminded of two other priests from my diocese who served as military chaplains and who made the ultimate sacrifice. The first is Father John Washington, who served during World War II, and the other is Father Charlie Watters, who was killed while tending to the injured in Vietnam.

Father Washington posthumously received the Distinguished Service Cross for his selfless sacrifice, and Father Watters posthumously received the Medal of Honor for his heroism in the face of grave danger.

I still do think of Memorial Day as the unofficial start of summer. It’s also the end of the school year and a time for moving to a new assignment for many military families. I also happily accept the discounts that many retailers afford military members and vets on this day.

But these people mentioned here, and so many others, are what Memorial Day is about. They’re who I think of today — and every day.

Eternal rest, grant unto them, O Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon them.

Father James A. Hamel is a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, and an active duty chaplain as a colonel in the U.S. Air Force.