Memorial Day 2016

These photos are of the Marietta National Cemetery located in Marietta GA.  

My father

Rick gave all in Vietnam

We Shall Keep the Faith

by Moina Michael, November 1918

Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet - to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died.

We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields.

And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honor of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We'll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.

Faces of the First World War

Fort Gordon, Georgia

There's a great site in the UK concerning the First World War. It's the First World War Centenary. According to it's website the   "IWM (Imperial War Museums) is leading the First World War Centenary Partnership, a network of local, regional, national and international cultural and educational organisations."  There doesn't seem to be much interest in the United States about remembering the 100th anniversary of this war.  It seems to me that we, as Americans, would be interested in the conflict that cost over 116,000 American lives.  It's also the conflict that made a whole generation grow up fast.  

Harold C. Hutchens is seated with the young man on his lap.

My grandfather, Harold C. Hutchens, was one of those young men.  He grew up in Tallopoosa, Georgia, a small town located in north Georgia close to the Alabama border.  He played baseball and studied law at the University of Georgia.  Then in 1917 he served in the 82nd Division out of Fort Gordon, Georgia.  After the war he stayed in France and studied at the University of Toulouse until 1919.

Here's his diploma.  I love how ornate it is.