Some years ago I saw this meme posted on social media on Memorial Day weekend. I didn’t make it, but I wanted to know the story behind it. No one who posted it ever said who James was, or who the woman is, so I researched it.
You’ve seen the meme. Here’s the true story behind it.
This is Mary McHugh at the Arlington National Cemetery grave (Section 60 Site 8535) of her fiancé, Sgt. James John Regan, who was 26 and from Manhasset, N.Y. He died February 9, 2007, in northern Iraq of wounds suffered when an IED exploded near his vehicle while on combat patrol. Regan was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was the third graduate of Chaminade High School to die in the Iraq war, and had been named a member of the National Honor Society.
He played lacrosse in high school. “He had the ability to dominate a game by himself,” said the school’s coach, Jack Moran, “but he led by example and leadership. He’s one of these unique kids who make everybody better.”
Regan had intended to go to law school, but the 9/11 attacks occurred while he was in college, killing many of the citizens of his home town, and upon graduation he joined the Army Rangers. He had earned the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and several other medals. “He said, ‘If I don’t do it, then who will do it?’” Miss McHugh said. “He recognized it as an option and he couldn’t not do it.” He attended the Army’s Language Training School, and worked to learn about the countries where he served.
He left behind three younger sisters: Maribeth, 25, Colleen, 20, and Michaela, 16, who called her brother “a best friend to everyone he knew.” He planned to marry McHugh when he got out of the Army in February, 2008.
The picture was taken over Memorial Day Weekend 2007, by photographer John Moore of Getty Images, who has also worked as a war photographer in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“She sat in front of the grave, talking to the stone,” Moore said. “She spoke in broken sentences between sobs, gesturing with her hands, sometimes pausing as if she was trying to explain, with so much left needed to say. Clearly, she had not only loved him but truly admired him. When he graduated from Duke, he decided to enlist in the Army to serve his country. He chose not to be an officer, though he could have been, because he didn’t want to risk a desk job. Instead, he became an Army Ranger and was sent twice to Afghanistan and Iraq — an incredible four deployments in just three years.”
Is the photo “too intimate, too personal”?
“Like many who have seen the picture,” Moore said, “I felt overwhelmed by her grief, and moved by the love she felt for her fallen sweetheart. After so much time covering these wars, I have some difficult memories and have seen some of the worst a person can see — so much hatred and rage, so much despair and sadness. All that destruction, so much killing. And now, one beautiful and terribly sad spring afternoon amongst the rows and rows of marble stones — a young woman’s lost love.”
So now you know at least some of the story behind the meme that has been “going around” for some years now.
Considering the events of this past week, Memorial Day is going to have some special poignancy for many….
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Thank you for posting. I have seen it before and it needs to be shown every once in awhile. How frequently, I am ashamed to say that I do not know.
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Perhaps every year, since there will always be someone seeing it, and reading the story, for the first time. -rc
I’ve read the story before. Some of us were lucky and our armed forces person came back. Memorial day is never bbq day.
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I think I first posted it in 2013 — on Facebook. I’ve also published it on Medium. Thought it was time to put it on my own site. -rc
Thank you for researching and posting.
This is what I see every year.
My grandfather’s baby brother, the one he raised, is a permanent resident of Willamette Nat’l Cemetery. He died in 1984 of wounds received in the Battle of the Bulge.
My wife and I would visit his grave twice a year: Memorial and Veterans’ weekends, sending photos to his surviving siblings. Each year, the endless expanse of headstones, each detailing a life wasted by hate and greed, chokes me up.
Memorial Day would always bring me to tears. People gather in twos and threes (one under the ground) to discuss their hearts. Sweethearts, spouses, children, buddies ….
The image that resides in my memory is a woman lying much as this one. Four plots to the north, two rotund bikers share a fifth of wine while they play guitar and harmonica. Several rows back, two small children place flowers on a grave, perhaps a grandparent they never met.
The magnitude of mistakes is simply staggering.
That others pay the ultimate price is far worse.
Thank you for sharing this story.
Aw man, I’m crying now.
War is hell.
Damn Putin.
Yes, I know, it wasn’t Putin’s fault this man died. I have friends in Ukraine and they’re having many such people now. And also those Russian cannon fodder that Damn Putin sent to die for his lie.
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Her story isn’t universal, but too close to that to be comfortable, and ongoing. -rc
Thank you for doing the research.
My wife and I try to go to the local Veteran’s cemetery in Hampton every year on Memorial Day weekend. Someone puts small American flags on almost all of the graves. There are also a number of German soldiers and sailors buried. A U-boat was sunk off the coast in 1942, and there were numerous POW camps in this area. For some reason, there were no flags on the German graves this year, although, the few Italian graves in the same area had them. There are also many Civil War graves.
I know that we go to say “thank you.”
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Thank YOU for doing it, George. -rc