Memorial Day & the Special Sacrifices of Men

Memorial Day and the special sacrifices made by men

By Denise Noe

Few holidays are as somber as Memorial Day. This day, which takes place on the last Monday in May, honors American soldiers killed in service to their country.

It seems like a good day to remember the special sacrifices that our society, and every other, demands from men. While the Wikipedia states, “The holiday commemorate U.S. men and women who died in military service for their country,” the truth is that death in combat is anything but an equal opportunity disaster. 

Memorial Day has its roots in efforts to honor those killed in America’s Civil War. On both sides, only men were drafted and only men knowingly sent into combat. There were a handful of women who fought but they had disguised themselves as men. (Their motives varied with some women so dedicated to either the Union or the Confederacy that they wanted to fight for it and others unable to bear separation from their husbands.)

The Wikipedia notes, “After World War I, it expanded to include those who died in any war or military action.”  In both World Wars, America drafted only men and sent only men into combat. Women volunteered for the military and served in a variety of important and demanding capacities. However, the “risk rule” protecting female soldiers (and yes, limiting their roles and pay) was firmly in place as it would remain until very recently. American men were sent to kill and die and they died in enormous numbers; a tiny number of American women were killed in combat-related accidents.

The sending of men into this most dangerous of activities is not the result of sexist stereotype or prejudice. The pronounced size and strength differences between the genders mean that many of the most dangerous combat positions can only be effectively performed by men.

Sadly, the fact that men are the combat soldiers, either exclusively or primarily, has often been used against men as a group.  It is often said that if women ran the world, there would be no wars.  This is false.  Wars are not caused by any mass spike in the testosterone of the men in belligerent countries but because of disputes about resources and ideologies that affect both sexes.  Countries led by women have often gone to war but women leaders like Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, and Margaret Thatcher sent men to battle because, like men leaders, they had to in order to win.

The tendency to strain for gender inclusiveness when discussing America’s military has been lampooned by lesbian anti-feminist (yes, the combination does exist) Florence King with the phrase “our fighting men ‘n’ wimmin.” The truth is that women in today’s American military serve in a greater variety of roles than they have at any previous time. With the demise of the risk rule, they also realistically risk their own demises in situations that are not freak accidents. However, it remains true that roughly 85% of our military personnel are men and that they continue to be the vast majority of casualties.

“It’s a man’s world” is a cliché with a superficial plausibility but one that is misleading. War is an arena in which men are uniquely, if unavoidably, burdened. They make up the vast majority of lives cruelly cut short that we remember on Memorial Day.