What was given

Always I remember the crosses, on this day. Pristine white, laid out row upon perfectly symmetrical row, they sprout like a field of wildflowers in this quiet green place, every cross representing a father or son or brother who didn't come back from what was naively termed the Great Adventure.

Every cross representing something given, without expectation of payment.

War is the great waster, thief of life and potential and what-might-have-been. It is never something to be glorified, to be held up as some shining beacon of human virtue. Even in a good cause -- and the good causes almost without exception look less so in retrospect -- it reveals the worst of what we are.

And also the best, in an oddly paradoxical way.

The latter is why, on this Memorial Day, we go to the cemeteries and place American flags on graves. It's why on this day I remember those white crosses in the St. Mihiel American Military Cemetery near Thiaucourt, France, where so many of our countrymen rest who died trying to reduce the St. Mihiel salient in September of 1918.

It was the first major American engagement of the First World War, and if it was a victory it was a costly one, part of less than six months of combat that would steal some 53,000 American lives. The cemetery at Thiaucourt lies at the center of the old salient, a peaceful place set down in the middle of lush French farmland. If you didn't know any better, you'd swear you were in Indiana somewhere -- at least until, in the middle of a field of wheat, you spied the crumbling remains of an old German pillbox.

Or looked out over all those crosses, row on perfectly symmetrical row. Or stepped into the cool marbled shade of the memorial, where name upon name is etched in gold on a black plaque that stretches almost from floor to ceiling. The names go on forever, representing eight different American divisions. They are the names of the American soldiers who fought in the St. Mihiel region, and who now "rest in unknown graves."

Outside, in a leafy alcove, stands a white marble monument with an American doughboy carved on it in bas relief. Bareheaded, eyes closed, he holds his helmet at his waist in his left hand. Beneath him is this inscription: "Blessed are they that have the home longing, for they shall go home."

Around it, beneath those crosses, other American doughboys sleep on. They are home at last, in a sense. And because they and so many of their brothers are, generations of other Americans got to sleep peacefully in their own homes.

And because we do, we remember them this day. And on all days.