Lisa Millar is one of the Australian ABC's correspondents in the USA.
In a piece on The Drum on the ABC's web site, reflecting on the upcoming Memorial Day in America this weekend she has some observations, given that she is a "foreigner", perhaps more acute than otherwise, of what true memory really embraces.
"When I was here in my first term as a correspondent, the wars were just beginning. The nightly news would broadcast stories from those far away places in the Middle East. Young soldiers and marines would stand in front of the camera and send messages back home, talk about the challenges of facing this difficult enemy and reinforce their commitment to being there.
There would be stories from the communities they'd left behind, the towns where just about everyone was related to or knew someone who had gone to war.
There was Killeen near Fort Hood where I stood in the high school's corridor looking up at the stars hanging from the ceiling - silver for each parent currently deployed overseas, gold for those who had died, pinned up by their children.
But as the years have dragged on the prominence of those overseas wars seems to be waning. In between the big announcements on troops surges and pullouts and exit dates, attention drifts.
The ABC's cameraman Louie Eroglu and I attended a citizenship ceremony this week at a National Guard Armory in Maryland just north of Washington DC.
There were about 20 immigrants taking the oath, facing the flag and pledging their allegiance to a country where many had already lived for 20 or 30 years.
It was being held there because it was Military Appreciation Week and at least a dozen of those earning their citizenship were in uniform. Signing up to fight for the US puts you on a fast track through bureaucracy.
There were several speeches from uninspiring local officials - but one line remained with me.
Brigadier General James Adkins thanked them for their service and for the load they carry. And then he casually tossed in this statistic - only 1 per cent of Americans currently serve in the military. One per cent of a population of 300 million people.
It's easy to understand how many Americans can live their daily lives without really being touched by war.
And it's no wonder so many of the military are returning to those battlefields again and again.
It's interesting to ask a group of soldiers how many are on their second or third or fourth deployment. Hands go up across the room. Some of them admittedly are shorter missions than others but the military is discovering what happens when soldiers go back again and again.
This week, after years of requests, the ABC was finally allowed into the Walter Reed Medical Centre in DC. They call it a centre but really it's a vast stretch of buildings that's the hospital for the majority of injuries from Iraq and Afghanistan. We were filming for The 7.30 Report - a story you'll see in the coming weeks - following the challenges facing a young soldier who lost the bottom part of his leg to an IED or improvised explosive device two months ago.
I asked the therapist taking a plastic cast of his stump how many times a week he did this. Sometimes a dozen a day, he said.
For many this Memorial Day in the US will be like all the others before. But it won't be for some. Because more "Names of the Dead" have appeared in print since last year - a reality in black and white."
In a piece on The Drum on the ABC's web site, reflecting on the upcoming Memorial Day in America this weekend she has some observations, given that she is a "foreigner", perhaps more acute than otherwise, of what true memory really embraces.
"When I was here in my first term as a correspondent, the wars were just beginning. The nightly news would broadcast stories from those far away places in the Middle East. Young soldiers and marines would stand in front of the camera and send messages back home, talk about the challenges of facing this difficult enemy and reinforce their commitment to being there.
There would be stories from the communities they'd left behind, the towns where just about everyone was related to or knew someone who had gone to war.
There was Killeen near Fort Hood where I stood in the high school's corridor looking up at the stars hanging from the ceiling - silver for each parent currently deployed overseas, gold for those who had died, pinned up by their children.
But as the years have dragged on the prominence of those overseas wars seems to be waning. In between the big announcements on troops surges and pullouts and exit dates, attention drifts.
The ABC's cameraman Louie Eroglu and I attended a citizenship ceremony this week at a National Guard Armory in Maryland just north of Washington DC.
There were about 20 immigrants taking the oath, facing the flag and pledging their allegiance to a country where many had already lived for 20 or 30 years.
It was being held there because it was Military Appreciation Week and at least a dozen of those earning their citizenship were in uniform. Signing up to fight for the US puts you on a fast track through bureaucracy.
There were several speeches from uninspiring local officials - but one line remained with me.
Brigadier General James Adkins thanked them for their service and for the load they carry. And then he casually tossed in this statistic - only 1 per cent of Americans currently serve in the military. One per cent of a population of 300 million people.
It's easy to understand how many Americans can live their daily lives without really being touched by war.
And it's no wonder so many of the military are returning to those battlefields again and again.
It's interesting to ask a group of soldiers how many are on their second or third or fourth deployment. Hands go up across the room. Some of them admittedly are shorter missions than others but the military is discovering what happens when soldiers go back again and again.
This week, after years of requests, the ABC was finally allowed into the Walter Reed Medical Centre in DC. They call it a centre but really it's a vast stretch of buildings that's the hospital for the majority of injuries from Iraq and Afghanistan. We were filming for The 7.30 Report - a story you'll see in the coming weeks - following the challenges facing a young soldier who lost the bottom part of his leg to an IED or improvised explosive device two months ago.
I asked the therapist taking a plastic cast of his stump how many times a week he did this. Sometimes a dozen a day, he said.
For many this Memorial Day in the US will be like all the others before. But it won't be for some. Because more "Names of the Dead" have appeared in print since last year - a reality in black and white."
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