In Memoriam
The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This Eastertide call into mind the men,
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have gathered them and will do never again.
Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, has always been for me the most difficult day on the Jewish calendar. Even though it has been many years since I’ve heard the sirens in Israel that mark this solemn day, I never stop hearing their wails reverberate inside my heart. Thousands of young men and women have given everything for the Jewish People and the Land of Israel. They were mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. They were my friends. They were your friends. They were one of us. The pain—it’s unbearable. I admit the paucity of my worth as a writer in being unable to properly and adequately express the anguish I feel over my fallen brothers and sisters. Frankly, I feel the paucity of my worth writ large today. All give some, but some give all.
As a military strategist, I often think about what it means to send troops to war. I have tried, with no success, to imagine what it must have been like for General Eisenhower on the morning of D-Day. Gen. Eisenhower knew that he was sending troops to die; he had even prepared a speech he would give in the event the invasion failed, a speech in which he assigned to himself and only to himself the mission’s complete failure. And yet, Ike proceeded with the invasion anyway. And despite its world-altering success, Gen. Eisenhower was always brought to tears at the magnitude of his decision; he had, in fact, sent men to die. How did he do it?
How do any of us fathom sending troops into battle?
The answer, it seems to me, must be this—it can be nothing else: the commander sends troops to battle because he loves something worth dying for.
Because there are things in this life—fragile, precious things—that cannot be preserved by speeches or slogans. A home. A people. A covenant. These cannot defend themselves. They must be guarded by the living, and—God help and forgive us—sometimes by the dying.
The commander does not send his soldiers to die. He sends them to defend. To valiantly hold the line. To make the world safe for those who cannot make it safe for themselves. He sends them knowing full well that the price may be blood, that the cost may be limbs, or futures, or families left with an empty chair. But he also knows that there is something worse than death: there is surrendering the field to those who would burn the orchard and salt the earth.
It is not ambition, glory or pride that moves the commander. It is love. Love of the men he leads. Love of the life they are fighting to protect. And love, real love, is willing to bleed for the beloved.
I recall watching a documentary some years ago about the war in Afghanistan called The Hornet’s Nest. The documentary film follows two journalists, Mike Boettcher and Carlos Boettcher (a father and son), embedded with a group of United States Army soldiers from 101st Airborne Division sent on a mission into one of Afghanistan's most hostile valleys. The footage is as breathtaking as it is frightening.
At the end of the documentary, the troops gather before they depart Afghanistan to do their final roll call and honor the brave men who died in battle. It is the most heartrending few minutes of film I’ve ever watched. The commander of the troops, Command Sergeant Major Chris Fields, who throughout the film has been the most stoic and badass commander these men had ever encountered, belts out the names of the deceased, showing almost no emotion.
And then, just when he thinks the cameras are off and his troops have left him, CSM Fields turns around and totally unravels. He sobs uncontrollably and falls to his knees. These were his men. It is he, and he alone, who was responsible for them. In those moments of sheer agony, one thing remains so abundantly clear: he loved these men more than he loves himself.
I cannot help myself but quote here in full a letter I have been thinking about incessantly since 10/7: the famed Bixby Letter, popularized by Saving Private Ryan. Every time we get the dreaded news of another soldier who sacrificed his life for God and country, I am reminded of these solemn words, the words of a man who also knew intimately what it was like to send troops to die:
Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.Dear Madam,
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln.
May the Almighty assuage the collective anguish of His nation’s bereavement on this day.
There is a lie whispered in the modern world—that all conflict can be talked away if only we had a better negotiating team, that peace is the natural state of man and that war is always failure. But the truth is older than the comforts we haughtily try to will into existence: peace is an invention. Peace must be made. And sometimes it must be made with fire and sanctified in blood. There is no nation, no liberty, no sanctuary for the weak, that was not purchased by the courage of the strong.
This is why we remember our fallen. Not to glorify war—but to honor love.
We owe the fallen soldiers of the IDF more than mere memory. We owe them lives lived with purpose, with courage, with devotion to the very things they died to protect. Family. Faith. Home. Nation.
And so today, on Yom HaZikaron, I bow my head—not only in grief, but in awe and gratitude.
The brave men and women of the IDF died with the name of this people on their lips. Am Yisrael Chai. The People of Israel live.
So let us live. And let us carry them with us.
That is our duty.