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Date: 6/7/2023
WEST SPRINGFIELD — Deaths in battle aren’t the only losses Americans should remember on Memorial Day, Erik Martin told his neighbors during the May 29 ceremony in front of West Springfield Town Hall.
Martin, a West Springfield resident and a police officer in Holyoke, spoke about his previous service in the Army National Guard and the comrades he lost in battle — and afterward.
“We remember those that flew, rode or sailed away with us, but whose seats and bunks were painfully empty on the plane or boat back home,” he said.
Martin read the sobering arithmetic of American deaths in wars: Revolutionary War, 31,000 dead. War of 1812, 15,000. Wars against Native Americans, 3,000. Mexican-American War, 13,283. Civil War, including both sides, 655,000. Spanish-American War, 2,446. World War I, 116,516. World War II, 405,399. Korean War, 33,686. Vietnam War, 58,220. Persian Gulf War, 294. War in Afghanistan, 2,325. Iraq War, 4,492.
“It is far too easy to forget that each and every single one is not just a number, but a living, breathing fellow American that loved and was loved, and who, like many of us, likely spent a lot of time dreaming of the life we all hoped to return to, of the warm embrace of loved ones waiting for us upon our return.”
He then added, “Those numbers are staggering, but it is even more staggering when we realize that they do not include those who died from their wounds after the guns fell silent. Wounds that are both visible and invisible.”
Martin said in the small unit with which he deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, roughly 10% of his fellow soldiers have died after returning from war, from “injuries that were invisible to all but themselves.”
“We must never forget any life we have lost,” he said. “Many of us here have similar invisible injuries, and if you do, I beg you: reach out. I can tell you this — doing so was the best thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. We owe it to every single one of them to live our lives as full of health and happiness as we can. … They will continue to live through all of us.”
Army veteran Mustafa Thompson, who served as master of ceremonies at the May 29 ceremony, wiped tears from his eyes after Martin’s speech.
Thompson had spoken earlier about how America’s military tradition stretches back to the minutemen of the Revolutionary War — ordinary citizens who were prepared to take up arms and die for their country. That spirit of citizen-soldier continues in today’s National Guard, he added, though the Guard does not only stand ready to defend from invasion. Guard members, like Martin was, are deployed to the front lines of America’s wars and are called upon to fight and die for their country.
Quoting President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Thompson said, “Members of our community, our West Springfield family, have given ‘their last full measure of devotion’ fighting tyranny abroad, injustice at home.” Memorial Day, he said, is “a sad reminder that the peace and liberty we enjoy is born in sacrifice.”
Mayor William Reichelt said there are more than 1,000 veterans living in West Springfield.
“We must keep faith with all those who have died in pursuit of permanent peace,” he said.
State Rep. Michael Finn (D-West Springfield) asked attendees at the ceremony to remember not only the tragic loss of Americans who died in battle, but the heroic acts of theirs that put them in harm’s way to protect others.
The ceremony included performances by West Springfield High School band and chorus members, a gun salute and the reading of the names of West Springfield residents killed in military service.