This Memorial Day, let’s learn something from the first famous person who died in combat for the United States. Then, consider the nonfamous ones who died the same day and ever since.

Joseph Warren was a prominent Boston physician. He was the man who, in April 1775, enlisted Paul Revere for the midnight ride to warn that the redcoats were marching toward Lexington and Concord. Warren came under fire in an ensuing ad hoc melee. Two months later, at the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Revolutionary War’s first pitched confrontation, Warren, by then commissioned a general in the Massachusetts militia, fought in the ranks of front-line privates and held his position against two redcoat assaults before falling under a third attack when he ran out of ammunition.