Tommy Denton

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Equally important this Memorial Day weekend in honoring those who perished in the nation's military services is remembering the ultimate purpose for which they put on the uniform.

Those enlisting or re-enlisting in the armed forces pronounce the words of the oath: "I, (state name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

Officers take a less-specific oath regarding obedience to orders of superiors, but that reflects the need for greater discipline, judgment and discretion in shouldering the burden of trust and responsibility demanded of commanders.

Both officers and enlisted men and women, however, take their respective oaths to defend the Constitution: the ideals it embodies, the institutions that seek to sustain and preserve liberty, rights and responsibilities.

In battle, though, such abstractions pale before the horrors of a savage reality.

That's why a grateful nation pauses this weekend each year to honor those who confronted their fleeting mortality almost as if in spite of the abstractions that drew them into the inferno.

Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote the somber lines, "Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die." On Memorial Day, the American people would like to take some comfort in knowing that those sent in their name into harm's way were not so fatalistically resigned.

Most Americans would like to believe that those confronting the face of battle draw inspiration, courage and fervor from the flag, from reflection on liberty and justice, and from their own vast reserve of inherent patriotism.

Those who have stood in the face of battle, however, understand a dimension of reality denied those who have not stood at that mortal precipice.

Of those flung into the abyss, some died in the performance of great feats of courage. Others were just unlucky. All were swallowed into the maw, some mourned by loving families and friends, others all but anonymous except for the cold listings under the heading "Killed in Action."

We remember them, and honor them, with a prayer that they rest in a peace that the horror raging on the battlefield denied them in life.

None of them declared the wars that destroyed them. Decisions to send troops into combat are the responsibility of the nation's civilian leadership, who also take oaths to protect, preserve and defend the Constitution. Theirs is the greater burden, both civically and morally, to justify the blood, sweat and tears their judgments may cause to be shed.

Some of the wars in America's history have been necessary and just, others have been less evidently so. All, regardless of their origins and justifications, have involved grave human error and misjudgment that led to needless, tragic losses of life. That, too, is an inescapable consequence of the human condition, and a humbling reminder of its vulnerabilities and flaws.

In no small numbers, heroes have emerged in every war to inspire the paradoxical hope that some virtue might prevail as enemies indulge the darkest of inhumane impulses to destroy each other.

For those families bearing the unbearable sorrow of losing a loved one in the line of duty, medals for heroism provide faint consolation.

Memorial Day is a celebration of ultimate sacrifice by countless men and women in the service of the common good. At Gettysburg, after one of the gravest losses of American life to the ravages of war, Abraham Lincoln captured the spirit of that sacrifice by reminding the ages to come that it falls to "the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced."

Just as a grateful nation understands its solemn obligation to commemorate and honor its sons and daughters who have poured out the last full measure of their devotion, so a just nation exacts from its civilian leaders an accounting of their assurances that such final measures of devotion have not been spent in vain.

Denton's column appears in the Sunday edition of The Roanoke Times.