The Other Memorial Day

Between Dory Devlin's post on high tech grilling and sites like dealnews that give you the skinny on which merchants are discounting what for the Memorial Day Weekend, you're all set, right? Not so fast. There's another Memorial Day that we often relegate to back burner status. The other Memorial Day commemorates soldiers who have died in the service of the United States. On that front, high tech is playing a role, too.

Ancestry.com is releasing its military collection, with what the company claims is the largest online assortment of U.S. military records—covering more than three centuries of American wars and conflicts from the 1600s through the Vietnam War. The site contains more than 90 million names and 700 titles and databases of military records from all 50 U.S. states. The collection includes documents such as draft registration cards, prisoner of war records, muster rolls, burial registers, medal of honor awards, and enlistment records. Most poignant are the newsreels that relive moments in American military history. The military records are being made available for free through Memorial Day and are worthy of a look.

Over at AOL, there's a sobering, almost mind numbing, chart of American fatalities and casualties in all wars, as well as a chart of the cost of each war. At History.com you can find a history of military service in the U.S. (Did you know that the number of U.S. armed forces personnel who served in World War II between December 1, 1941, and December 31, 1946, was 16.1 million?)

Though the Iraq war still rages on, there are relatively few Memorial Day archives. The Washington Post's Faces of the Fallen is a collection of information about each U.S. service member who died in Iraq and Afghanistan during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Similarly, Military Times has a moving tribute to soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan right up through the latest news from Iraq. Many of the photos and stories of their deaths are taken from the local newspaper accounts.

A three-day weekend that kicks off the summer season is, no doubt, a time for grilling, shopping, and fun in the sun, but spending a few moments recollecting "the other Memorial Day" reminds us of the sacrifices so many have made on our behalf.