MARYSVILLE — The American Legion Post 178 put out 350 chairs for Monday’s Memorial Day ceremony at the Marysville Cemetery.
They filled quickly, and more than 100 people stood on the perimeter, leaving just enough space for the color and honor guards to march through while the Marysville-Pilchuck High School band played patriotic music.
More than 250 donated casket burial flags lined the walkways through the ceremony.
After the National Anthem, sung by cadet Theresa Ambat, Legion member and Navy veteran Ken Cage read the opening prayer.
“Bless us as we gather today to pay our respects to our fallen comrades, no matter where their bodies lie,” Cage said. “ We ask, oh God, that you give them eternal peace and that their families may be blessed and comforted as they live their lives without their loved ones.”
Marysville Mayor Jon Nehring thanked the attendees and all who served and continue to serve in the armed forces.
Walking into the audience to be heard after the sound system went out, he paraphrased Abraham Lincoln’s famous “Bixby Letter,” written to a Boston mother who lost five sons fighting in the Civil War.
“It just somehow seems unfair that so many are called to lay their sacrifices on the altar of freedom,” Nehring said. “The gravity of this sacrifice should never be lost on any of us.”
Nehring concluded with another quotation from Martin Luther King Jr.: “‘In the end, we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.’ Today we gather to remember the silence of those friends who gave the last full measure for the United States of America on battlefields all over the world.”
Some in the crowd were emotional during the ceremony, others stoic.
The ceremony concluded with a memorial to prisoners of war and the missing in action, an honor guard rifle salute, the playing of “Taps,” and a closing prayer from Cage.
Near the back of the audience, retired U.S. Air Force senior master sergeant Paul Miller spoke with retired USAF master sergeant Bill McKeon.
The two had met at the ceremony for the first time, and found both had worked as airplane mechanics and served in Vietnam.
As a mechanic, Miller said, he carried a tool box, never a gun.
“That always bothered me,” McKeon said.
If they needed a weapon, they had to get it from the Army, McKeon said.
They both chuckled at the absurdity of some aspects of military life and grew serious when thinking about the cost of that war, which killed more than 58,000 U.S. service members and still accounts for more than 1,600 personnel listed as missing in action.
“I got to experience the excitement of the Tet Offensive,” Miller said wryly, referring to the January 1968 attacks against South Vietnamese and U.S. targets that undermined domestic support for the war.
With a shake of his head, he said, “We lost seven planes between two squadrons.”
Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.
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