Memorial Day commemorates Americans who have died in battle. We mark their sacrifice with our attendance at local parades and ceremonies, raising a flag in our yards in their honor, and with thoughts throughout the day about their heroics. Most of all, Memorial Day reminds us to thank these fallen soldiers for their service.

Our efforts to show living war veterans our appreciation often fall short, however. We don’t know where to begin. We have trouble thanking them when we meet veterans. America has a mixed history when it comes to honoring its servicemen and women. World War II vets are the greatest generation. Korean War vets are the forgotten ones. Vietnam vets were harassed upon return to America. And our most recent veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq are suffering all sorts of emotional and physical trauma we can’t begin to understand.

The year 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of one of the bloodiest wars of all, World War I, when 16 million people were killed and 20 million more were wounded. Many of us have never and will never see battle. Just as we struggle to thank veterans, we have a hard time fathoming what they went through. For those who weren’t there, words often fail to convey the all-encompassing tragedy of combat. However, we’ve had poets among us who have wrestled with turning the pictures of war into words on a page, and we turn to them now for apt descriptions to remind us why Memorial Day should be a day for somber reflection.

–John Balentine, managing editor

In Flanders Fields

By John McCrae (written 1915)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Killers

By Carl Sandburg (written in 1916)

I am singing to you

Soft as a man with a dead child speaks;

Hard as a man in handcuffs,

Held where he cannot move:

Under the sun

Are sixteen million men,

Chosen for shining teeth,

Sharp eyes, hard legs,

And a running of young warm blood in their wrists.

And a red juice runs on the green grass;

And a red juice soaks the dark soil.

And the sixteen million are killing . . . and killing

and killing.

I never forget them day or night:

They beat on my head for memory of them;

They pound on my heart and I cry back to them,

To their homes and women, dreams and games.

I wake in the night and smell the trenches,

And hear the low stir of sleepers in lines –

Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark:

Some of them long sleepers for always,

Some of them tumbling to sleep tomorrow for always,

Fixed in the drag of the world’s heartbreak,

Eating and drinking, toiling . . . on a long job of

killing.

Sixteen million men.

Wars

By Carl Sandburg (written in 1916)

In the old wars drum of hoofs and the beat of shod feet.

In the new wars hum of motors and the tread of rubber tires.

In the wars to come silent wheels and whirr of rods not

yet dreamed out in the heads of men.

In the old wars clutches of short swords and jabs into faces with spears.

In the new wars long range guns and smashed walls, guns

running a spit of metal and men falling in tens and twenties.

In the wars to come new silent deaths, new silent hurlers

not yet dreamed out in the heads of men.

In the old wars kings quarreling and thousands of men following.

In the new wars kings quarreling and millions of men following.

In the wars to come kings kicked under the dust and

millions of men following great causes not yet

dreamed out in the heads of men.