Today, we should remember all who have served to gain and keep our freedom.  It is much more than a holiday for family fun.  Check here for my brief review two years ago of the history of how we came to honor this day that stems from the cessation of the hostilities of World War I on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918 — and a few of my personal recollections from World War II. Today we honor all who have served and are serving, and especially all who gave their last breath for our freedom. 

We should honor the flag under which they served and serve to gain and keep our freedom—and too often died.  And while we enjoy the bands and parades to honor them, we should honor our National Anthem that stems from the war of 1812, and flows from the below complete version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” showing spelling and punctuation from Francis Scott Key’s manuscript drafted to reflect his delighted witness of the “Star Spangled Banner” still flying over Ft. McHenry after a major battle. Click here for the Smithsonian’s record of these historical events.  From the Maryland Historical Society collection:

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight

O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?

And the rocket’s red glare, the bomb bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

 

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep

Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,

In full glory reflected now shines in the stream,

‘Tis the star-spangled banner – O long may it wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

 

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,

That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion

A home and a Country should leave us no more?

Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

 

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand

Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!

Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land

Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto – “In God is our trust,”

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

Remember All Still Standing In Harm’s Way!

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