Every year in remembrance of Memorial Day the McBride High Alumni Association sends an email with the list of the graduates who lost their lives in military service or as police officers. By my count, that numbers stands at 101 since the first graduating class of 1925.

Typically, I have looked up a few of the names on our alumni web site to see their personal histories and how they lost their lives.

But this year, I decided to do something different.

Perhaps it was watching “The Story of G.I. Joe” on TCM (a highly praised movie for its depiction of the lives of combat soldiers), but I decided I wanted to look at those young men who lost their lives in World War Two (WWII).

The oldest McBride graduate to die in WWII was Francis Siemer (1929). He was a member of a mechanized reconnaissance unit who died of typhus at age 33 in New Guinea on October 30, 1944.

There were 74 McBride graduates who died in that war –  representing graduation classes from 1929 through 1944. But I noticed one graduating class appeared frequently in the list, and that was the class of 1938.

There are 161 names listed on the class of 1938’s page; of those 132 served in the military; and of those 15 lost their lives.

Where other classes typically lost numbers between two to five, the class of 1938 stands out for the size of its losses; the class of 1941 was second with nine.

So, this year – in their memory, these are the men of 1938 who lost their lives:

The first class of 1938 graduate killed – before Pearl Harbor – was John Mullady in a car crash on July 14, 1941, three miles west of Rolla – likely stationed at Fort Leonard Wood.

The first battle death was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Francis Pedrotti was a Marine and orderly to Admiral Isaac Kidd on the USS Arizona; both were killed when the Arizona blew up.

James Duffy lost his life serving on the destroyer USS Jacob Jones when it was torpedoed by a U-Boat on February 28, 1942 off Cape May NJ.

William Becker was in pilot training for the Army Air Force at Goodfellow Field in Texas, when he was killed in a training accident on August 25, 1942.

Alois A Hollenbach was a navigator in an aerial troop transport unit, and was killed in a non-combat airplane crash on January 18, 1943.

Gregory A. Smith was a Marine Raider killed in the Southwest Pacific on December 24, 1943, likely during the Bougainville campaign.

Peter Gunn was serving in the US Army and was killed  April 11, 1944 on the Anzio beachhead during the landings there.

Raymond Belford was a Sergeant in the US Army Air Force and was killed in a non-combat crash in the U.S. on April 18, 1944.

Glennon Kreher served as a First Lieutenant in the Army Air Force and died in England on June 7, 1944.

Edward Cohen was a B-24 (Liberator) navigator and was killed on a raid on Yap Island in the Pacific on July 12, 1944.

Charles Heil was a B-17 (Flying Fortress) navigator and was killed in a non-combat accident over England on July 20, 1944.

Benjamin Savignac was a 1st Lieutenant in the 7th Armored Division and was killed by a sniper on October 18, 1944 near Duerne Netherlands.

Joseph Boversmith  was an infantryman in the U.S. Army who died on December 30, 1944 of wounds received in Germany on December 26, 1944.

Martin Vincent was an Ensign in the US Navy who died on January 18, 1945 while serving in the Pacific.

Roy Lickenbrock was an infantryman in the U.S. Army who died on March 7, 1945 of wounds received in Luzon on March 4 1945.

All of them died far from family and home – whether in combat or from accident – in places they could never have understood, or located, even a few years earlier.

Most, if not all of them and their fellow classmates, could not have anticipated the tragic irony in Franklin Roosevelt’s speech just after their sophomore year when he said, “this generation of Americans has a date with destiny.”

When they left for military service, their families had to continue on with their lives; following the war news; and wondering where their loved one was.  They all had the gnawing fear that some day, against all hope, a messenger would bring a telegram with grim news.

The families of these 15 men did.

And as my grandmother did when she received the telegram notifying her of the death of her younger son, who was killed on Okinawa on April 10, 1945. Or as my dad, serving in the 7th General Field Hospital did, when he received a letter from someone in my uncle’s unit informing him of his death.

For all of them – and the millions of others who lost someone in war – there are wounds that never heal.

And that is the reality of Memorial Day.

Today, sincere words about loss and sacrifice will be spoken at solemn services at military cemeteries, with the mournful sounds of Taps.

But words spoken about loss bring little comfort to those whose lives were shattered and who suffer the hurt of the soul.

And sacrifice.

Words about sacrifice attempt to put the lives lost into some context of service to nation – the greater good.

And for the class of 1938 and all the others lost in WWII there is meaning to that; it was not a ‘good war’ – but it was a necessary one.

But for the McBride classes who lost members in Korea and Vietnam, the notion of a ‘greater good’, except in service to one’s buddies, is difficult to accept.

And even more so, through the wars of the last two decades – particularly with wars of “empire”, where words about democracy and freedom sound hollow – and are as empty as the speakers are who use them.

So, perhaps this year, sacrifice should be spoken and understood in a  different way: it is a sacrifice of the country’s future.

Each loss in a war is a song never written; art never produced; a discovery or invention never made; a cure never found; or a life well-lived as a member of a community – or a child never raised who might have done those things.

That is as true for the war dead of the class of 1938 as it is of those service members killed in the latest war in Iran this year.

So, this Memorial Day think about what we all lost with those who lives were taken from them, and us, in war.

And give a special thought for the McBride High class of 1938 – we owe them for giving us the lives we’ve been able to have.