Reading 'Round the Web

As you would expect, many blogs have both excellent posts, along with loads of links, to mark Memorial Day. Blackfive reprints a moving letter about a Marine killed May 9 in Iraq. He advises those of us who remember such sacrifices to mark this day, at least in part, by enjoying our freedome with families and friends, since that's what those who died would have wanted.

At Winds of Change, you'll find an updated version of their annual list of links through which you may express your support to troops from America and other lands. There are links to aid organizations, for expressions of support, and other worthy causes. H/T, Arthur Chrenkoff.

The Washington Times, which can be counted on to commemorate Memorial Day with respect, runs a story on 104-year-old Frank W. Buckles of West Virginia. Mr. Buckles is one of about 50 remaining WWI veterans in America. The article contains many statistics on our country's population of vets, and notes that the VA still supporst five children of Civil War veterans! Here are two more stories from the piece:

The VA "can and does treat other veterans, but they have to make co-payments." Many older veterans fail to find out whether they are eligible for benefits.

Others choose not to use them.

Among those is Maudie Hopkins, 89, of Lexa, Ark., who emerged last year as a surviving Confederate widow, the last, and surely the last such link to the War Between the States that ended nearly a century and a half ago. In 1934, when she was 19, she married William M. Cantrell, then 86. Mr. Cantrell served in a Kentucky regiment and was captured in April 1863.

The VA does not provide benefits to Mrs. Hopkins because she doesn't want government assistance.

Lloyd Brown, a 105-year-old World War I veteran who lives in Charlotte Hall, Md., in St. Mary's County, does not receive VA benefits, either.

"He has never used [VA] benefits," says his daughter, Nancy Espino. "We looked into it and were told he has too much income to qualify."

Mr. Brown was a teenager in Missouri when he enlisted in the Navy in 1915. For most of World War I, he was part of a gunnery crew on the USS New Hampshire, based in Norfolk. The New Hampshire was assigned to search for German U-boats, as submarines were called, keeping the shipping lanes open between the United States and Europe.

Mr. Brown spent hours at a time in the crow's-nest of the coal-powered battleship.

"We saw a German sub, captured it and brought it into the Philadelphia Navy Yard," where the crew was imprisoned, Mr. Brown says.

In the pages of the same paper, Bob Dole commemorates last year's WWII veteran reunion, and a rousing editorial calls all of us to remember why sacrifice is necessary if freedom is to last in a dangerous world.