On that Christmas Day Company I, First Platoon, was very hard hit. My good friend Oliver Coghill was on my right and a buddy named Palko was next to him. Both were killed, and I could hear Lieutenant Lawson calling for his mother.

- Excerpt from the written account of the combat experiences of Darrell Burdette Searls, former infantry soldier in Company I of the 290th Regiment of the 75th Division, United States Army, 1944-1945

For many Americans, Memorial Day is just another excuse for a three day weekend where people can party with family or friends, grill hamburgers and hot dogs or barbecue, and drink the alcoholic beverage of their choice. But it wasn't created for that purpose, at least not originally. Memorial Day began as a somber remembrance following the Civil War, and it was started not by any government but by a group of Union Army veterans of that horrendous conflict.

Three years after the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868, the head of an organization of Union veterans — the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) — established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. Maj. Gen. John A. Logan declared that Decoration Day should be observed on May 30. It is believed that date was chosen because flowers would be in bloom all over the country.

The point of this observance was, in the words of General Logan, to ...

[I]nvite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.”

Over the next several decades, various states established Memorial Day "observances." At first, this day of remembrance was limited to those who died in the Civil War, but after WWI, Congress expanded Memorial Day to "honor" all those who died in our country's many wars. In 1971, it became a national holiday, set to fall on the last Monday of May. Today, it's become just another opportunity for Americans to take time off, go on vacation and, above all else, shop.

Not that politicians haven't made gestures to remind us of what they wish to emphasize about the holiday. As the official Memorial Day page for US Department of Veterans Affairs informs us, in 2000 Congress passed a bill signed into law by then President Clinton, The National Moment of Remembrance Act, "[t]o ensure the sacrifices of America ’s fallen heroes are never forgotten."

The millions of soldiers who were slaughtered and died in those wars have been posthumously transformed into glorious heroes, almost god-like, their very humanity having been stripped away from them. Lost in all of these empty platitudes regarding the courageous warriors who sacrificed themselves to preserve our freedoms is any mention of why the wars that took their lives were fought, and most profoundly, what wars do to people. Any realistic depiction of war's horrors, and the the damage and harm it causes is pushed aside and ignored. Anyone who dares to contradict the prevailing patriotic narrative about America's wars is shunned, told to shut up, or labeled a traitor and anti-American propagandist.

But what war does to the bodies and minds of our vets, should be at the heart of any remembrance or observance. War is not a glorious adventure, it's a terrible nightmarish reality in which, as the saying goes, the living often envy the dead.

I have no personal experience of war, but my oldest uncle, now deceased, saw combat in the European theater of WWII. Specifically, he fought in the "Battle of the Bulge, oft described as the "greatest battle in American military history." Certainly in terms casualties suffered by American soldiers, and particularly deaths, it ranks right up there with the "greatest" of all American battles.

My uncle Darrell died in 2010 after a prolonged struggle with prostate cancer. I knew him as a great storyteller, and his friends and colleagues remember him as a noted raconteur, always ready with a witty joke or amusing anecdote. Yet, during all the time I knew him, the one life experience he did not discuss was the story of his service in WWII. Only late in his life was my aunt, a former editor, able to convince him to write about his time as a combat soldier.

His Army division, the 75th, was the least experienced and youngest unit in the US Army in 1944. It was nicknamed the Diaper Division because of its youth. Many of its soldiers were literally 17 and 18 year-old kids straight off the farms of the Midwest. They arrived in LaHavre, France on December 13, 1944, three days before the German Army at Hitler's command, launched its last great offensive of the war against American forces in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium and Luxembourg. The American commanders were caught completely off guard. It was arguably the worst intelligence failure of the war, as undermanned American units guarding that part of the Allied line were quickly overrun.

While my uncle and his platoon camped in misery in the rain and mud at an assembly are in northwest France, the German Army's advance continued unabated, helped in large part by bad weather that kept American warplanes grounded. Out of desperation the 75th Division was committed to the Battle of the Bulge to support the flank of the 23rd Armored Division on December 20th. Almost all of them had no combat experience, including many of their officers. To aid his memory of his battle experiences, my uncle received copies of the US Army's morning reports for his platoon for the relevant period He used those reports as a reference, though his own memory was often at odds with the offical written record.

What follows comes directly from my uncle's memoir, It covers the next 47 days until he was removed from combat duty. In the interests of brevity, I've edited out much extraneous material, but I haven't changed his words. I've italicized the morning reports whenever he cites them.

December 20, 1945: Crossed French border into Belgium at 0930. Arr. Tongern, Belgium, and detrained at 2200. Weather cold and foggy. Rocket bombs passed overhead intermittently.

The December 20th report is an understatement and inaccurate. We actually made it to Hoeselt, Belgium. The city was already in German hands, and the French engineer hastily backed out to Tongern in a hail of small-arms gunfire. We walked back to Hoeselt, our objective, the next day.

December 21-24: During this period we were approaching one little town after another, expecting to find Germans. We encountered no German troops, and on at least one occasion we found American MP’s directing traffic, causing my Pennsylvania Polish ammunition carrier to comment, “Just another dry run.”

December 25: [Morning report deleted]

Finally on Christmas Day, as we approached the little crossroads of Werpin, we made contact. My friend Don Kennedy remembers crossing a bridge going into the town on which a GI from another unit was holding two German prisoners. Don says that the GI told one of the Germans to jump off the bridge to the rocks 50 feet below. The German refused, so the GI shot him and kicked the body off the bridge. Then the GI ordered the other German to jump, and he did. This incident was our first interchange with a unit that had been under attack for some time. Later that day we received word from that outfit to quit sending them German prisoners, because they were just killing them.

My recollection is that the bridge was already down when we got there, and we crossed the stream and scrambled up to the road. Houses were on one side of the road, the creek on the other. As we got up onto the road, we came under German machine gun fire ... Once across the road, we were out of the field of fire and could proceed up the wooded hill that was our objective. Three tanks on the road gave us covering fire, but their shells bursting in the trees on the hill sounded like firecrackers and were not very reassuring. For concealment, we went through a barn and out a back door, where the battalion commander patted each man on the back as we went through. Three days later, he was relieved and hospitalized with combat fatigue. The stress of sending men to their deaths was too much for him. [...]

We could hear bullets snapping around us, but other than the two prisoners, I didn’t see any Germans until we crested the hill and I saw a group running away in the distance. The range was fairly long; but firing several rounds at the departing runners, I could see my tracer bullets flying among them. They all went down, either because I hit them or for cover. I don’t know which, and I don’t want to know.

On that Christmas Day Company I, First Platoon, was very hard hit. My good friend Oliver Coghill was on my right and a buddy named Palko was next to him. Both were killed, and I could hear Lieutenant Lawson calling for his mother. Sergeant Bay was also killed, but not before he apparently wiped out a major position of a German machine gun unit that was probably responsible for our casualties.

My impression was that casualties were much worse than the report indicated. It appeared to me that only about a dozen of us were left, and I was the ranking soldier as a Pfc. I gathered up the survivors, and we continued along the ridge; but the Germans had left. We came upon one German body; and I ordered a young private to “stick it” with his bayonet, an action we had been trained to do to be sure that the person was dead. The boy was reluctant to do so but followed my order, and the resulting crunch suggested that the man had been dead for some time.

I had the feeling that I should go back and retrieve the $200 I knew Oliver was carrying and send it to his mother, for I was afraid it would never find its way back to her otherwise. But exhaustion overtook us, and we stopped and slept where we fell.

December 26-31: [Morning report deleted]

The next morning a captain found us and directed us to go back down the hill and to connect up with our outfit. He warned us that we would see a lot of dead guys on the way. He was right. L Company had been making a frontal assault across an open field at the base of the hill we were to take and had suffered terrible casualties.

Moving through their positions was an almost otherworldly experience, like visiting a wax museum and viewing subjects frozen in time. One particular tableau is with me to this day. The morning was bright and sunny, with a slight breeze. As we filed past one group of bodies, we could see that one GI with a head injury was lying on his back, propped against a log, and that a medic bending over him had started to bandage the wound when he too was hit. The ends of the bandage were streaming out in the breeze.

During the next few days our company dug in along the ridge line we had secured on the crest of a hill under trees looking out over an open field. [...] The Germans attempted one attack but were decimated by a tremendous barrage.

Just before the attack, I was working on improving my foxhole, which at the time was about waist deep. I had placed my cartridge belt, trench knife, and canteen on the rim above and in front of the foxhole. Suddenly a shell landed 50 yards out to my right.
I crouched in my hole as 3 more shells exploded almost simultaneously right above me. I looked up to see that the trees had been blasted away; and where I had been in shade, sunlight now streamed into my hole. The handle of my trench knife had been severed, and my helmet was split from the top to the bottom rim. [...]

January 10: Three men to hospital. Division departed 1745 from Laid Prangeleux to Erria, Belgium, via truck. Arrived 2230. Weather cold. Morale fair. Roster shows 147.

... Erria was our first break since engaging in battle. We each got a hot shower for three minutes, and I remember the water running over my head and over my eyes as being black for most of the three minutes. We saw a frivolous movie, which oddly enough was a great morale booster. It was somehow comforting to think that nonsense could still go on. I met a fellow who I heard had been killed, and he said he had heard that I had been killed.

January 15: Location: Goronne, Belgium. One man sent to hospital, 3 men AWOL. (This entry is the first indication of the desperation of the troops. Since we were behind the lines in a rest area, the hospitalization may have been for a self-inflicted wound. The AWOLs are self-explanatory.) Left Erria, Belgium 0610 by motor movement. Arrived Goronne, Belgium, 0830. Got the men quartered. Remainder of time spent working on individual weapons and equipment. Distance traveled: 8 miles, Weather cold. Morale of troops good.

One might question the assessment of morale with men going AWOL. [...]

January 16-20: [morning reports deleted]

It is now apparent to me that morning reports were often prepared at some later time and were primarily to record changes in personnel. Little to nothing is recorded about action, and locations given are suspect. [...]

On the night of January 17th, as the company was digging in for the night, I and another soldier were ordered to go out on sentry duty about 100 yards down the road. I borrowed an M1 rifle because my Browning Automatic Rifle was too cumbersome for sentry duty.

My partner and I found a perfect spot at the side of the road: a huge pine tree with snow-laden limbs that formed a tepee-like shelter in which we could conceal ourselves. We had just settled in when we saw a column of German soldiers coming down the road.

When the Germans were abreast of our position, my companion shouted, “Halt!” In the cold night air, his voice must have appeared to be coming from somewhere else, for the German soldiers immediately riddled the opposite side of the road with gunfire. [...]

Two soldiers flopped down in the snow about ten yards from our concealment. Why they did not seek the relative comfort of our pine tree and discover us is a mystery for which I will be forever grateful. Whether I could have defended myself is dubious. I no longer had a sidearm, since my trench knife had never been replaced; and I did not know whether my borrowed M1 had a shell in its chamber.

My partner and I spent a long night whispering possible strategies to each other as we watched the Germans talk among themselves and light up cigarettes. We also wondered what was happening back in our lines. Hadn’t they heard the shots being fired?

We were supposed to be relieved in two hours, but no relief showed up all night. All we could do was wait. The Germans were so close that we did not even dare urinate for fear of discovery.

Finally the sky began to lighten, and we saw a patrol from our lines coming down the road. I knew that the Germans would see our patrol in the next instant, so I leaped out, shouting, “Get out of here! There are Germans all around.” My partner and I rushed toward the approaching Americans. Another mystery is why neither they nor the Germans shot us.

We all made it back to our lines, and I reported the German position to the captain. I also had questions: “Didn’t you hear the gunfire? Why were we not relieved?” The captain gave me no answers. Everyone was half frozen and half asleep.

About that time a shot rang out, followed by a call for a medic. We heard another shot, a groan, and another call, “They got the medic.” We were facing some tough customers, and they had an advantage over us in that they were dressed in white camouflage uniforms. On the other hand our khaki uniforms contrasted with the snow to make us perfect targets.

I learned in the next instant never to presume that things are so bad that they can’t get worse. The sound of sixteen-cylinder motors starting up curdled our blood. It meant that somehow the Germans had brought in tanks during the night without our hearing them. Probably heavy snowfall had muffled the sound. [...]

By now the company was in full retreat, and I joined the others running pell-mell through the woods. Something told me to veer to my right. The next moment the lead tank opened fire with its machine gun, and the man to my immediate left went down with both legs shot away. For a short while he continued to move on his hands. [...]

By now all of my friends and most of my acquaintances had been killed or wounded. When we received orders to move, often a shot would ring out; and another case of a self- inflicted wound would shortly be reported. Many saw this drastic measure as the only way out. Those who tried it hoped for a wound serious enough to get them evacuated but not serious enough to be life threatening. One of my friends shot himself in the foot. Unfortunately his weapon was a 45 caliber pistol, and the discharge effectively severed his foot.

We were no longer a “band of brothers” but an assembly of strangers. Some of the replacement troops didn’t last long enough to get on the roster. Some died in their foxholes for no apparent reason. In the extreme cold a thin layer of frost covered everything. Body heat would dispel it, so when we came upon a soldier covered with frost in a foxhole, we knew he was a goner. [...]

At one point we had accumulated roughly 20 prisoners, and the captain asked for a volunteer to take them back to the rear to be turned over to MP’s. I immediately volunteered as a way to avoid the action for a while. At first the captain said OK but then reversed himself because he didn’t want to lose the fire power of my Browning Automatic Rifle. When I explained loudly that the weapon didn’t work, he agreed to let me go. As I herded the prisoners to the rear, some still in possession of their side arms, I wondered if any of them had understood my exchange with the captain.

Many Germans spoke excellent English, but one of them didn’t know enough to keep his mouth shut and began to taunt us, saying that he would be back in the states before we would. One of the guys simply stated, “No you won’t” and shot him dead.

One day ... Pvt. Vega , a Hispanic who was always being sent out on point, got his hands shot up and came walking back by me with a big grin on his face. I congratulated him on having a ticket home. He was the last person I knew from the original company.

January 24: Three EM dy to hosp, 375Med.Bn (NEC S1) remaining 23 Jan 45.

I was one of the three men listed. I suspect the letters designate exhaustion and indicate that the person is expected to return to duty. I have little recollection of the hospital or how I got there. I do remember being on a train when the division was being transferred to the Colmar pocket and hearing the medical orderly at one point say, “Searls blow your nose.” I must have been not much more that a zombie not to know when to blow my nose.

I do remember going back to duty but not being very responsive. At one point I was ordered out on patrol but did not answer the call. I was later told that I was found standing in line staring ahead uncomprehendingly. The officer said, “This man is not fit for combat.”

February 3: I am listed as returning to the 375th Med [Battalion].

February 4: I am listed as being returned to duty but transferred in grade to the service company.

My days as a combat soldier were over.

My uncle was removed from duty for what the US Army then called "combat fatigue." Today we use a different name: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, but its all the same thing. My uncle was fortunate. He was never sent back into combat after receiving his diagnosis. That cannot be said of the thousands of US soldiers suffering from PTSD and other wounds who have been sent into combat on multiple tours of duty to the Middle East over the last fifteen years.

Studs Terkel famously titled his book of interviews of WWII veterans "The Good War." My uncle's memoir brought home for me the terrible truth, however, that no war is good, though some may be necessary. The plain fact of the matter is that the only good thing about WWII was when the fighting stopped. As my uncle once said to me in a self-revealing moment of understatement, "War isn't all it's cracked up to be."

Today I honor my uncle's memory, and his courage in writing honestly about the true nature of modern warfare as he experienced it. There was nothing glorious about the war he described. It must have been very painful to dredge up the memories of his many friends and comrades and even enemies whose deaths he witnessed, but I am grateful that he did.

Many people who never witness war up close and personal, including many stay at home Generals and Political Leaders speak with patriotic fervor of the honor and glory and sacrifice of the members of our armed forces, but their words ring hollow to me. All war, even a war of necessity, is the worst activity in which human beings can engage.

Germany engaged in a war of aggression that led to the deaths of tens of millions of soldiers, civilians and, lest we not forget, the the genocidal mass murder of Jews, and other groups deemed sub-human by the Nazis. For that, leading Nazis were rightly indicted and judged guilty at the Nuremberg trials. Defeating Nazi Germany was a necessity, but that didn't make it a good war.

Sadly, it is now our government that is engaging in numerous wars of aggression. Under international and US law (since we are a signatory to the Kellogg-Briand Pact) wars of aggression were outlawed and are considered war crimes. Yet none of our current or former political or military leaders have been indicted for starting and continuing these wars of aggression, nor are they ever likely to face an international tribunal to adjudicate their responsibility for those war crimes. Today, as we speak, somewhere in the world, US soldiers are participating in armed conflict, whether as part of a special ops unit, a pilot dropping bombs on the innocent and guilty alike, or the soldiers who remotely control aerial drones of which President Obama has made such great use since he became Commander-in-Chief of our nation's armed forces.

My daughter's boyfriend is a member of the NY National Guard, part of the US Army Reserves. A day doesn't go by when I do not think of the possibility of him being sent off to fight in some faraway country against people who more than likely pose no real danger to the national security of the United States. Memorial Day should be about remembering those who fought and died in our wars, but not for the purpose of glorifying their sacrifice as heroes. Instead, their deaths should be a reminder to us that war is the cause of horrific slaughter. It also ruins so many other lives it touches, both among combatants and civilians alike. War destroys families, neighborhoods, whole cities, societies and nations.

Memorial Day, which rightly calls on us to remember those who died in our wars, should be a warning and a lesson to us not to treat war and armed conflict as mere geopolitical games between great and small powers, but as a real and terrible act that should only be taken as a last resort, when the lives of our people and the security of our nation is in imminent danger.

That's not the lesson most politicians, elected officials and all those who profit from our nation's wars want us to take away when we remember our war dead. But what their deaths truly tell us is that war kills people indiscriminately and without mercy. Those who it kills are lost to the people who loved them forever. Their deaths leave a void that can never be filled.

War is the darkest stain in the history of humanity. When you take the time to reflect upon what it means to remember our nations' war dead this weekend, and also I would add, to reflect upon all our surviving war veterans, many who live with debilitating mental and physical ailments, reflect on that.

Thanks for reading

Steven D