Memorial Day Celebration Ceremony
Lakeside Cemetary, Folsom CA

As delivered by Brigadier General (CA) Roland L. Candee
On 25 MAY 2009

I am honored and thank you for the opportunity you’ve given me to address you this Memorial Day 2009. 

While I have spent over seven years of my military career on active duty, I spent the majority of my 33 years of federally commissioned military service in the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard.  As a reserve, I have a civilian career in addition to my military career.  On the civilian side, I am a judge having been appointed to the bench in 1992 and elected in Sacramento County as a judge in 1994, 2000, and 2006.  I served for all of 2006 and 2007 as the Presiding Judge of the Superior Court of California, in and for the County of Sacramento.   

On the military side, I currently am the Commanding General of the California State Military Reserve, a group of some 825 volunteers that serve in a state military defense force that is authorized to exist by Congress in 32 USC Section 109.   The California State Military Reserve, in theory, is meant to be that military organization that would step in to take the place of the National Guard in the event the Guard was mobilized and unable to respond to the Governor’s call for military service in the state.  During WWII, the California State Military Reserve had around 12,000 members and performed many of the coastal defense missions.   

These days, the California State Military Reserve regularly responds

to calls to State Active Duty in situations such as civil authorities calling for help in fighting fires and responding to floods, earthquakes, and civil unrest.  The State Military Reserve also provides installation support in various locations around California where the mobilized armed forces of this country are no longer available, and provides much assistance to the National Guard in mobilizing federally recognized troops and troop units being deployed across the globe in support of the Global War on Terror, specifically providing Combat Lifesaver Training, small arms training, and medical/dental/legal assistance to deploying troops, and providing much of the chaplain support when troops return in a manner that sadly qualifies them as a Memorial Day honoree. 

          I’m sure that I’m preaching to the choir today when I tell you that Memorial Day was originally known as Decoration Day, having been instituted right after the Civil War by organizations similar to your Folsom Joint Veterans Organization, as a way to commemorate the sacrifices of Civil War soldiers by decorating the graves of those who died in defense of their country.  Even though there were celebrations of Decoration Day as early as 1866, it wasn’t until 1971 that Congress declared Memorial Day as a national holiday to be celebrated the last Monday in May in memory of all those who paid the ultimate price while serving in the military in defense of our country in any of America’s wars.   

When one adds up the total direct combat related deaths in our country’s military forces, you get very close to 650,000 dead.  When one adds in those who died in time of war but not directly related to combat, you get over a million souls that have sacrificed themselves on freedom’s altar and who are truly worthy of being honored on Memorial Day.  With that many soldiers, airmen, and sailors having paid the ultimate price, what is absolutely and stunningly clear is that freedom isn’t free, it comes with a cost that can be measured in blood. 

          Why do our soldiers, airmen, and sailors willingly continue to pay such a price in defense of this country?  Well, military service is a natural calling for those who recognize that there is a price to be paid for the securing of the freedoms so many of us take for granted on a day to day basis.  Military service also often results in someone serving out of the country and being able to see first-hand just how remarkable our country is by seeing how life actually is in other countries that don’t share our fundamental freedoms.   

In 2001, I was privileged to be sent overseas to speak, as a trained and experienced US military lawyer, to the senior legal officers of the country in which I was a guest.  They wanted help in regard to transforming from a conscript army to an all volunteer army (something we’d already done), in dealing with women in the military (something we’d already done), in dealing with conscientious objectors (something we’d already done), and in regard to general military justice processes.  It was amazing how much of an intellectual problem these senior legal officers had with the basic concept of command discretion in military justice matters.   

For Americans, its very understandable for there to be command discretion in military justice matters because military justice is a command tool used to install discipline in the ranks – so when the commander says let’s all get up and charge that machine gun nest you won’t have a bunch of people saying “Hey, Captain, can we vote on this or something?”  The actual scenario that caused such problems was a fact pattern where there was a fight in the barracks and someone, the instigator of the fight, was seriously injured.  For those from this other country, the person who inflicted the injury had to be punished – after all, conscript troops are really just property and that person had effectively injured the commander’s property.   

For the Americans present, the response was if the instigator of the fight was the one who got injured (and the US company commander thinking, “Hey, if I was there, I’d have punched this guy out myself!”), and then doing nothing against the person who inflicted the injury was certainly well within the discretion of the commander.   

After struggling with this fact pattern for what I thought was all together too long a time, I found myself having lunch with a bright young Major who was the equivalent of a West Point graduate in this other country, had served as a liaison officer with Americans for years, had seen the United States (Fort Leonard Wood), had attended law school in this other country and was writing articles about the differences between the Uniform Code of Military Justice (our rules) and his country’s procedures.  Now, I would have thought that this young bright Major would have understood our values and system, but what he said to me is something I find quite remarkable upon reflection.  He told me that my scenario was all wrong, that resolving such a barracks fight situation where the instigator of the fight turned out to be the one seriously injured would never be a problem for his country’s military.  He said “If that was my company and that happened and I knew the right result was not to punish the one who inflicted the serious injury, I would simply have my sergeant bring me two of the enlisted men and they would give me sworn statements about how the injured man had actually fallen down the stairs and injured himself”.  Wow.  Talk about adopting an “ends justify the means” approach to life.  Where is the value of truth, due process, and honesty?  Yes, the good old United States of America, where we do value truth, due process, and honesty, is definitely worth fighting for.          

I believe that if you were to ask any of those serving in our armed forces today, well over 99% would tell you that they serve willingly in the military because we have a country that is worth fighting for and that they want their families, friends and relative to continue to live in the land of the free and the home of the brave.  Those that have died for our freedom would ask today that you remember and honor their sacrifices that have been made for you by knowing that you, each of you individually, have been shown incredible love by every single one of those who paid the ultimate price to secure and protect our freedom.  The Scriptures put it this way, in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this that one lay down his life for his friends”.   

It is entirely appropriate and fitting that we, on Memorial Day 2009, take this time to say thanks to those veterans who died for our freedom.  May we remember and honor their sacrifice by doing what we can do to protect and promote the freedoms we are truly blessed to enjoy in these United States of America, freedoms bought and protected with blood, yet freedoms we are to enjoy.  Those freedoms include the freedom to vote, freedom of assembly (that we’re enjoying right here), freedom to file a suit and have that suit honestly considered and treated with due process, freedom to serve as a juror when called, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and all the other myriad of freedoms that we too often take for granted.  Today’s battle cry is coming from the graves of all of those who we honor today, and that battle cry is, to my ear, loud and clear in proclaiming to each one of you, “Enjoy your freedom!”.  God bless you all.