Memorial Day in song

In my teens, Memorial Day weekend meant the start of the summer, celebrated with D's family at their cottage at Put-in-Bay. We'd go swimming for the first time of the year, frigid though Lake Erie might be. It was the 70s then, and "Veterans" tended to be our father's generation who'd seen service in the Second World War. Looking back now, I think how odd this was, because D's much older brother had been a Marine in Korea. Art school had not prepared him well for this, and he didn't deal with the world too well when he came home. PTSD is how they might diagnose him today, were he still alive.

Older now, I see Memorial Day in it's serious context, a day established to honor American Veterans, particularly the fallen ones. For a number of years, I've thought to do a 'play list' of songs I find appropriate for the day. My highly subjective choices tend to be mostly considered folk songs. The traditionalist in me takes note of Memorial Day being instigated in the aftermath of the American Civil War (show that I'm a Yankee by that title, don't I?) and has me start with songs from that era: Paddy's Lamentation/ By the Hush - fine advice for the lads back in Ireland to miss being drafted for the war between the states.
Tenting Tonight - captures the camp beside the battlefield spirit.
Richmond on the James - Anne & Cindy's finely wrought version of this lament for loss moves me.

My personal taste in songs tends toward the Anglo/ Irish/ Scottish continuum, and their wars had a wider geograpic range. The pride of a solider is represented well in a couple songs. The Minstrel Boy - I've always had a very eccentric vision of what that "wild harp slung behind him" would be, yet this is a song that covers the whole gamut of feelings about soldiering with a surpassingly beautiful melody. Green Hills of Tyrol - a lament for a Scottish soldier while The Flowers Of The Forest - played as a tune for military funerals as well, as well as being a song for lament. In

The Bantry Girl's Lament the possible loss of a significant member of the community - at least to the womenfolk- in battle, is a thing contemplated. Of the Irish, though of the same vintage as the American Civil war, is Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye, the most potent scream of anguish at the return of a wounded veteran I've ever heard. The American version, When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again (hurrah, hurrah) is so very sprightly, and another thing entire. I once heard the opera singer Ben Luxon sing Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye nearly acapella, when he was performing folk songs from both sides the Atlantic with the late Bill Crofut. Bill did a bit of percussion on his banjo head, and Ben's baritone nearly shrieked the last verse "You haven't an eye, you haven't a leg, you're an eyeless boneless chickenless egg, and you'll have to be put with a bowl to beg..." every hair on my body stood at attention.

My father was a veteran who was wounded before seeing action, but did sing songs of his time in the army:
Oh, how I hate to get up in the morning - Irving Berlin's charming gripe, which he paired with:
Gee, Mom I want to Go Home - in a similar vein.
There's a feel to WW2 vintage songs that tends to be a bit more flippant, even when serious. a couple I'm fond of that refer to who does, or doesn't do the work in a war: Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire and D-Day Dodgers

In thinking it over, many of the songs that come to my mind are actually about after the wars, how the survivors deal, veteran or civilian, and sometimes how they don't. Eric Bogle, of Australia has written several songs from a retrospective, thoughtful viewpoint: And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda about the Anzac veterans, and a song many think is Irish: No Man's Land (aka often as Green fields of France or Willie McBride). That's just his top two, there are more. While Bantry Girl's Lament wonders what they'll do without the lad who won't come home, Dancing at Whitsun describes how tradition goes on without the menfolk, after the war, while honoring their memory.
Huw Williams' song Rosemary's Sister is a concise vignette of how survivors of the Blitz carry scars. While not soldiers, they were most certainly particpating in the war in a way the American population didn't have to.

From wartime in my generation comes Pete Seeger's Where have all the Flowers gone (with the last verse by Joe Hickerson that turns it into a circular song). For my generation, it's a touchstone of a song for those who opposed "the war" (which in those days only meant Vietnam) and those who fought in it. I like to think it gives respect to the mourned dead. A duo of songs I learned from the singing of Phil & Margaret I sing as a paired set: Richard Thompson's How will I ever be simple again? and Margaret Nelson's wistful Died in the War. Phil sings John Prine's Sam Stone as a modern version of the tragic ballad genre. Years ago, in an introduction to Don't Let Me Go Home a Stranger Robin & Linda Williams talked about how it brought to mind a relative who was a Vietnam era Veteran, struggling with life. That thought comes to me every time I sing it.

A pleasure of songs, even when it's a pleasure tempered with sorrow, is how it can evoke memory and make one contemplate the subjects as you sing or listen.