Ironically, today, May 30th was Memorial Day in 1942. Anything but a holiday where war was concerned.

Word from London was the arrival and settling in of U.S. troops in Northern Ireland; the first leg of the journey that would eventually lead to Invasion of Europe. Reports as of this day claimed the troops were well behaved and everyone in Belfast seemed to like them. Not so much with the IRA though. As it was also reported those elements of the organization, sympathetic to Germany, were routinely reporting troop arrivals to the German Embassy in Dublin, causing a security concern.

Meanwhile, RAF bombers were busy striking at munitions factories outside Paris, as well as raids on Cherbourg and Dieppe, in addition to air strikes at industrial centers in Germany. Fighting in the Libyan desert was escalating with news of British advances in the region.

Reports from Moscow told of the first shipments of U.S. tanks being put to work almost immediately on the Eastern Front.

From the Pacific. Reports out of Australia concerned recent air attacks on Japanese ships outside Port Moresby and talk about a drastic change in priorities of supply shipping.

And it was disclosed that recent British cargo shipments, dodging enemy submarine and air attacks, were carrying such "essentials" as costume jewelry, golf balls and party favors. The Americans didn't fare much better as it was revealed one shipment arrived in Australia carrying some 70 tons of nothing but bottled soft-drinks. The heavily censored report went on to say that one General, dismayed over the soft-drink fiasco, said it would have been much better had the 70 tons been of ammunition instead. Priorities were still skewed at this still-early stage of the War.

In Washington - since it was a holiday, there was little Capitol Hill news to report, aside from reports that it was no holiday for Defense Plant workers and that production was going at full-speed. It was also noted that Congress was anticipated to be getting closer to abandoning draft deferments for Married men and that they would be in the mix along with everyone else of draftable age shortly.

And that was the story on this Memorial Day (May 30) in 1942, as reported on the Blue Networks World News Roundup.

Even around Memorial Day, the news on this May 29th in 1941 was about anything but Peace.

Reports from Berlin said a full-on invasion had taken place on the island of Crete. Reaction over FDR's latest Fireside Chat regarding U.S. shipping and neutral waters was swift and predictable. German bomber raids over England had increased, with raids on Northern Ireland included in the mix. In addition to Crete, intense fighting was now taking place in North Africa, concentrating on the area of Tobruk.

It was also reported that Berlin was relaxing its armistice terms to allow the Vichy French Air Force to "defend itself", causing many in London to speculate that it was a ploy on the part of the Laval government and Berlin to stimulate French manufacture of planes, the majority going to Germany in an effort to step up their lagging production with 7-8 of every 10 planes going to Germany. The French Merchant fleet was under Axis control and French Captains were ordered to scuttle theirs ships rather than face capture by the British.

From London came reports of RAF raids over Northern Germany and the French coast and confirmation that German raids the previous night did heavy damage on Liverpool and Belfast.

From Washington came reaction to German reaction to FDR's Fireside Chat saying Berlin was getting nervous and resorting to name calling and that U.S. involvement in the War in Europe would only be a matter of time or if "one of the axis powers decides to pull the trigger".

All that, and it was only the morning news via NBC for May 29, 1941.

So ending up this Memorial day, it only seems fitting to have it close with Robert Wyatt and his unforgettable version of the Elvis Costello Classic, Shipbuilding, written in response to the Falkland Islands War in 1982.

Wyatt, founding member of The Soft Machine and the primary force behind a number of other groups from the 1960's onwards, was one of the key figures in the early Progressive Rock movement. Owing to an accident which left him unable to play drums, he has continued to write, produce, sing, play keyboards and has a string of great albums to his credit, in addition to numerous collaborations with everyone from Bjork to Roger Waters.

It's this version of Shipbuilding that is so poignant and the one that ranks as probably one of the best Anti-War songs of the last 30 years. The sentiment is timeless.

And so is Robert Wyatt.

In honor of Memorial day this year, I will be running some addresses honoring the dead and missing from wars we've been involved in.

Starting off with President Kennedy's Dedication of The Memorial To The Missing from May 23, 1963, given at Battery Park, New York.

A short address - but timely.

Don't forget the reason you have the day off.

President Eisenhower proclaimed May 30th as Memorial Day in 1953. Asking for a day of prayer and remembrance in the hope of ending all wars.

Here is Eisenhower's proclamation, as read by Actor Robert Montgomery on May 29th, 1953.

No mention made of Barbecues or "Happy Memorial Day" anywhere.

News of this day in 1993 also began with that region of Eastern Europe known as the former Yugoslavia. Slobodan Milosevic was indicted by the World Court on War Crimes over the conflict in Bosnia (which was only going to get worse in the coming months). Meanwhile, the first launch of the year for Shuttle Discovery went off without a hitch. Since it was also Memorial Day weekend in 1993, Airlines decided to take advantage of all the vacant seats and offer hefty reductions in fares. An outbreak of Meningitis in an Aurora Colorado Middle School claimed its second victim and Seagulls staged a full-on invasion of a small Utah town in search of grasshoppers, bringing analogies of the last time Seagulls made such a dramatic appearance it was also supposed to have something to do with too many Grasshoppers and the Mormons went giddy over the outcome. No such revelation this time. Just a lot of squawking and visions of Alfred Hitchcock.

All for that May 27th which happened to have fallen on a Thursday in 1993. Here is the news of that day via The CBS World News Roundup.

Less than a month before Korea, years before Vietnam and decades before Iraq, Memorial Day was about remembering those who served and died during the Wars previous, back to the Civil War. The Second World War had only ended less than five years before, the task of rebuilding was still going on. The upheavals and changes were new with words like "Right Of Self-Determination" and "Cold War" recent additions to the lexicon. Just sixty years ago today.

Everything was in a state of change, nobody really knew where any of it was headed. The only thing certain were fields of white crosses, evidence that sacrifice was the constant - no matter how much things changed, or how much they remained the same.