There’s an elegiac tone to this week’s magazine. It’s appropriate, for this is the final issue we will publish in Military Appreciation Month and our two main stories are about endings: the ending of a tradition, the ends that give meaning to military lives, and the ends to which servicemen — it’s mostly men — come when they get back from war.
Our cover story is a feature written by Jay Caruso about Rolling Thunder, the organization that since 1987 has brought millions of bikers to Washington to draw attention to the plight of men and women captured or missing in action in foreign wars. The bikers ride past the Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson memorials, creating a dignified if unconventional tableau for the little guy against a backdrop of monuments to the great. For those of us who live and work in the federal capital, it’s become an annual rite of late spring to have the National Mall taken over by an enormous cavalcade of gleaming Harleys, sometimes with sidecars, usually ridden by middle-aged or elderly citizens wearing patriotic colors, and always contributing to a roar that must provoke Zeus to envy.
This year is the last time this multitudinous column of riders will come to Washington; it’s gotten too expensive and onerous, say the organizers. So the sun will at last go down on this three-decade tradition. Our wonderful cover illustration, by Daniel Adel, captures the essence of this farewell, with bikers riding toward the horizon into a glowing sunset over the headline, “The Last Roll of Thunder.”
This magazine’s other big military feature is by Salena Zito, who talks to five former military men and women from widely differing walks of life and gets them to open up about their personal understandings of war and what it means to wear their country’s uniform. These firsthand vignettes capture the ground-level understandings and motivations of a handful of individuals who contributed to the great collective effort of a nation at war.
There are two other Memorial Day-themed articles that I recommend to your attention. Trent Reedy, in his weekly Life in Uniform column, honors two soldiers, one of whom he knew, who were killed in Iraq. And Jamie Dettmer, in his Traveling Life column, walks through a sunlit graveyard near Salerno, Italy. Allied troops are buried there who died in battle fighting alongside Dettmer’s father. Dettmer senior returned home with terrible wounds. Others didn’t return at all.
This may all seem to be somber stuff, but it’s dignified rather than gloomy, contemplative rather than bleak. And Memorial Day is not just for the sacrifices of yesterday. It is also for the families and friends of today. We as a nation get together and between us light more grills than on any other day, with the possible exception of July Fourth. Eric Felten uses his Downtime column to ponder the mysteries of barbecue, and his painfully learned college lesson that you can’t flash-fry stew meat and expect to be able to eat what you get.
