Memorial Day on the Boston Commons

To properly commemorate Memorial Day, five hundred volunteers placed 37,000 flags on the Boston Common to mark every Massachusetts citizen killed in war since the American Revolution.  

This sea of flags is a stirring sight.  But numbers alone does not tell the full story.  Historians may see battle casualties in the American Revolutionary war to be light, but considered in proportions, those who gave their lives for self rule would have been 2.1 million in contemporary scales.  Of course much of this sacrifice came from Massachusetts, the cradle of the Revolution, which started with the "Shot Heard 'Round the World"  at Lexington and Concord.