Memorial Day: ‘We Owe Them’

The annual Memorial Day Observance was held Monday morning at the Loudoun County Courthouse. 

“Your being here today demonstrates that you respect the fallen who have given their last full measure of devotion to this country,” Leesburg Mayor Kelly Burk said. “You know the real reason for Memorial Day. You know the sacrifices that the men and the women in the armed services who did not return to their families. You know of the pain and the hurt to the families when someone did not come home. Thank you for being here and for remembering.”

“Today is for the ones who did not come back. We do not know them, but we owe them,” she said. 

Keynote remarks were made by Robert C. Holcomb, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who volunteers as a docent at the George C. Marshall International Center, leading tours of Marshall’s Leesburg home, Dodona Manor. 

Holcomb highlighted one of the lesser-known duties carried out by Marshall—his service as chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission. 

He noted that it was in that role that Marshall delivered the Memorial Day remarks during Leesburg’s Memorial Day service in 1956. He was there to help dedicate the World War I memorial.

The commission was formed by Congress in 1923 to create and maintain American military cemeteries overseas following World War I. Marshall took over the chairmanship from Gen. John J. Pershing in 1949 and held the post until his death in 1959.

Holcomb said that during World War II, nearly 361,000 Americans died overseas and only about half were brought home by their families for burial. By the mid-1950s, 14 new American cemeteries had been established in Europe to provide permanent memorials to those who did not return.

Holcomb noted that Marshall cited his work on the American Battle Monuments Commission in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize.

“The cost of war in human lives is constantly spread before me, written neatly in many ledgers whose columns are gravestones. I am deeply moved to find some means or method of avoiding another calamity of war. Almost daily, I hear from the wives or the mothers or the families of the dead,” Marshall said. 

Holcomb pointed out that Marshall’s stepson, Lt. Allen Tupper Brown was killed in his tank near Vellertri, Italy, on May 29, 1944, and was buried in a temporary cemetery there.

“Yes, Marshall had a deep, personal understanding about those neat columns of gravestones,” Holcomb said.

“The fundamental theme of all of the honored dead buried in these cemeteries is that of service,” Holcomb said, pointing out that most of those buried in those cemeteries were drafted and called to fight to protect others. 

“Many brave American men and women have died overseas defending other nations from tyranny and they deserve to be honored this day on Memorial Day,” Holcomb said.

The ceremony concluded with the laying of wreaths at each of the war memorials in courthouse square, as well as a display of the names of Loudoun residents who died during the Civil War on the Union and Confederate sides.