As of Saturday, at least 1,655 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

So many discussions of Memorial Day involve symbols, flags waving, sculpture, and reverence. And they have their place, but we at the Pepper want to praise the human beings who have suffered physically and mentally. They've given up so much for the nation - whether or not we think these wars are justified.

The following writers also give the troops their due:

The Heretik: For the Good and the True, In Memory 2005
The Heretik writes: "War Must Be Fought Only for the Good and the True. Or soldiers die for falsehoods." And more. The Heretik follows with poetry, which sometimes is the only way to express that which cannot be expressed.

Norbizness: Memorial Day, 2005
Discussion of Sam Fuller, director and veteran. Norbizness ends with the resounding line, "Here's hoping that as many as possible escape next year's tribute from Nightline."

Rox Populi: In Memoriam, Write Your Own Caption #199
The first post provides links to scholarship funds for children of military families. If you really want to do something for the soldiers, this is a good start. The second post is an image of George II, in full military regalia. Ours was "Oh, goody! Halloween came early this year!"

Suburban Guerilla: A Hole in the World
SG captures the emptiness left behind with the death of every soldier. The last lines: "Each and every one of these deaths left a hole in the world. That is why we count them. They mattered."

It's all too easy for us to think of soldiers as part of the larger army, to assume that they are a group protecting our freedoms, but they are individuals with their own sets of relationships. It's called "personhood." Pepper just finished Atonement, and we read All Quiet on the Western Front, both of which depict the unmitigated horrors and agonies of war. Those of us safe and snug cannot possibly understand what our soldiers have gone through no matter how many combat movies we watch or video games we play. We can't know what they went through as individuals. The pain of a soldier is one that cannot be expressed in words - the only memorial that got it right was the Vietnam War Memorial ... and many people despised that precisely because its form did not stimulate easily recognizable emotions.

All we want is for this war to stop and for the troops who are there now to make it home alive. And that's the purpose of the Big Brass Blog, which we'll explain in the next post!