Memorial Day: Remembering What We Lost

Memorial Day 2012:

On the 6th of September, 2007 just after 23:00 hours local time outside the city of Mosul, in Northern Iraq, three soldiers of 2nd Platoon, Alpha Troop, 1st Squadron, 9th U.S. Cavalry were killed when their vehicle was destroyed by a roadside bomb. They were brothers, fathers, husbands and sons who signed up to ride with the Cavalry knowing full well what lay ahead. 

Memorial Day: Remembrance

Memorial Day began as a local observance in the aftermath of the Civil War, the first national commemoration took place May 30, 1868, at the direction of Gen. John A. Logan, commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. Though his General Order No. 11 specified "strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion" -- meaning only Union soldiers -- those who tended the burial sites at Arlington, Va., Gettysburg, Pa., and Vicksburg, Miss., decided on their own to decorate the biers of both Union and Confederate war dead.