In Honor of Memorial Day… some ROBERTS family soldiers

ROBERTS Family (Click for Family Tree)

On this Memorial Day, like every Memorial Day and every single day, there are no words rich enough with meaning to truly say “Thank You” to those who have fought for our freedom. There is an even bigger hole in our language to express our feelings for those who gave all, and absolutely no words powerful enough to soothe their bereaved families. Our soldiers, sailors, aviators, and marines were young, with a whole life ahead of them, yet they put it on the line to help our citizens continue to live fully with the freedoms guaranteed in our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and the additional Amendments to our Constitution.

Many of them lost that promise of a full life, and we honor them today.

Those of us who nervously and proudly raised our right hands and swore the sacred oath to protect our democracy as we entered the service of the United States of America (“I,____, do solemnly swear 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…”) can begin to feel what some of those lost young men and women felt as they literally fought to protect the rights of each and every one of us, sometimes knowing their death was imminent. But we must only say “can begin to feel”- we cannot truly know it in the same way that they did. Those who have survived combat have an even greater depth of understanding, because they were very close to making that ultimate sacrifice, and may have been a part of a fight as their friends and comrades did sacrifice it all, for our freedoms.

So how can we say “Thank you” to our soldiers?

How can our gratitude not be trite?

First, we can thank those who served and survived, and the families of those who gave the ultimate gift to maintain our democracy. We can help them with their needs, whether emotional or financial.

But we must also live our deep appreciation for their service through our commitment to upholding a truly free democracy for every US citizen. We do this by educating ourselves and voting, by supporting our leaders, caring for our neighbors, and working so that none have their Constitutional or human rights infringed upon. This is what they fought for, this is what they died for.

To say “Thank you,” and really mean it, we must help preserve what our military has fought for since 1776- our liberty, our democracy. That is the best way to honor our military.

Today we can honor the young men in these photos. The pictures (other than Camp Meigs barracks) are from the Roberts Family Photo Album, but we do not know the names of these soldiers. They could have surnames of Roberts, Murrell, or Daniel, as we do have pictures of those intermarried families within this album and some of the boxes of photos.

Transcription:

Some pictures (Eh?)
3 of my pals & my self at Camp Meigs
Some bunch (Eh)

Camp Meigs was northeast of Washington, D.C. and established in 1917 to provide training for the Quartermaster Corps. About 25,000 soldiers passed through this camp during the war, and it was a separation center for soldiers who returned. The camp was abandoned in 1920, and has since been overbuilt.

We forget the tedium of war.

This ode was penned on the reverse of the above picture, found when taking it out of the album:

“I know this thing
is horrible, and
so is the water
hot so when you
look at this, please
forget me not.”

Not like mom’s cooking on the farm, for sure. Note that some of the men had a plate, others carried a skillet to eat out of. How nutritious was this food for physically active and still growing boys/young men? We have to think of other aspects of our soldiers’ health too- the 1918 Influenza Epidemic was decimating people throughout the camps, the country, and the world during these years. World War I also saw the first use of chemical weapons, and soldiers who survived those attacks had health issues throughout the rest of their life; the addition of biological and nuclear weapons puts our soldiers today in harm’s way to an even greater extent. Over all wars, a huge number of our military died or were debilitated for years by the diseases they picked up in camps or on the battlefield, in addition to the injuries. We all know, too, that the injuries were not just physical, but mental as well. Too often our soldiers must continue the fight through those horrors.

While the Army did have motorized vehicles, animal power was still used in World War I:

Since we do not know the names of the soldiers in these photos from our Roberts Family Album, we do not know what happened after these photos were taken- did these young men fight in Europe? What battles did they fight in? Did they come home? In what shape were they when they did come back to family and their homeplace?

Some of these soldiers look similar to young boys in previous pictures we have posted from this photo album, so please add a “Comment” to this post if you can identify any of them or share information so that we can more fully honor them on this Memorial Day, and the Memorial Days to come- and every day.

We must always remember that freedom is not free.

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1. All photos from the Roberts Family Photo Album.
2. Each image is numbered to help with identification, since most have no names or places noted on them.
3. Enlistment Oath, U.S.C. Title 10, Sec. 502. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2011-title10/html/USCODE-2011-title10-subtitleA-partII-chap31-sec502.htm
4. Camp Meigs information and photo: http://www.fortwiki.com/Camp_Meigs_(3)

 

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