What are your plans for this coming three-day weekend?

Will you catch up on yard work? Clean the car? Maybe fire up the grill, catch the Indy 500 race on TV, or just relax with an adult beverage?

Well, as you drive around the peninsula, you might notice something different. Our cemeteries will sport little American flags planted near the headstones of veterans.

Every year, our neighbors, under the direction of the American Legion, visit the graveyards to plant the flags to remember the sacrifices others made so we all can enjoy the long weekend.

It is a time to remember. And I do.

When I was a boy, There was an old geezer who lived down the street. He used to cough and wheeze a lot as he tended his garden. I asked him about it, and he didn’t say much. Another neighbor said the old gent had been gassed during the “Great War.” He was lucky, many didn’t come home at all.

I remember one day in late summer, 1945, when mother grabbed my brother and me, a pair of cooking pans and a pair of long-handled wooden spoons. She shoved us out the front door and on to the porch. Our next door neighbors were jumping up and down and screaming. We joined in the celebration with mother cheering while her boys grabbed the spoons and started banging on the pots. We lived on a busy street across the street from a policeman. On this day, with his cap askew, he was sitting in the grass and firing his pistol into the air. The Gelarden boys thought it was pretty neat.

Mother told us it was V-J Day, that World War II was over. Now our boys can come home, she said.

And, some did, including Boothbay’s Curt West and John Druce. Many did not.

A few years later, some of these same servicemen were recalled and sent to a place called Korea. They said it was a police action and not a war. To Boothbay’s Dan Jamison and others, it damn sure looked like a war.

When it ended, most came home, some did not.

In the 1960s, I was in college where I obeyed my father’s command: “Don’t let your grades get in the way of your education.” Part of my “education” involved spending the summer working (?) at the old Rendezvous on Southport.

The fun ended when I got a letter from Uncle Sam. The next two years, two months and 10 days involved serious business, including a tour in a place called Vietnam. I made it home, and so did Southport’s Jim Singer and Boothbay’s Barry Sherman and Pat Farrin.

But, many did not. For years, some of those who made it home were visited by nightmares and worse.

Not too long ago, our sons and daughters put on the uniform and visited places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Again, most came home. Some did not.

This weekend is Memorial Day. It is the time when we remember those who did not come home and thank those who did.

On our peninsula, veterans young and old will once again march to the lively music of our community band. They will parade at the library at Newagen, the Southport school, the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library, the Boothbay Harbor waterfront, the Boothbay Common and in the heart of East Boothbay.

At each stop, civic leaders will remember the sacrifices made by the living and the fallen. Clergy from various denominations will ask the Almighty to smile on us all.

Today, news reports tell us that some of our national leaders are considering committing our servicemen and women to another overseas conflict. It is a complicated situation that might involve us in an ancient feud that has disrupted the Middle East since before Alexander the Great was a corporal.

As our leaders meet, they must consider the interests of our allies and friends, the possible effect upon the world’s stream of commerce, including a potential disruption to the Earth's oil supply. They will also figure out how to find the billions of dollars for this type of military operation. And, of course, there are political consequences to think about.

But, as they sit around the long tables in their soundproof and spy-proof rooms in the Pentagon and the West Wing, they might want to consider another factor: the folks who wear the “boots on the ground.”

Those who wear the uniform, and not the leaders in air conditioned offices, will be asked to risk their lives to carry out their orders, and they will.

But, in the end, they will pay the final bill, and so will their families and friends.

God bless them all.