Memorial Day observers mindful of past, current conflicts

ROSWELL - Georgians across the state packed parks, sang patriotic songs and remembered soldiers lost to war in the first Memorial Day holiday since the September Eleventh terrorist attacks. <br> <br> Thousands of people turned out for the fifth annual ``Roswell Remembers,&#39;&#39; billed by organizers as the state&#39;s largest Memorial Day event. Event staff estimated the attendance to be from seven-thousand to nine-thousand people, far exceeding previous crowds. <br> <br> Guest speaker General Paul Tibbetts, pilot of the plane that dropped the world&#39;s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, said Americans should remember the soldiers overseas fighting the war on terrorism and encourage them with e-mails and letters. <br> <br> The 89-year-old Tibbetts told the crowd, ``Our future now rests in the hands of those people who are over in Afghanistan and that area. It&#39;s going to be a long, hard fight. A lot of them are going to get killed. We&#39;re fighting an enemy unlike any we&#39;ve ever fought before.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> A bagpipes and drums corps marched into the ceremony playing ``God Bless America,&#39;&#39; a plaintive reminder of the song that became the nation&#39;s anthem on the steps of the Capitol, at ballparks and around the country following the attacks. <br> <br> In Athens, actors portrayed military conflicts that no living person remembers -- battles dating all the way back to the Roman Empire. About 50 re-enactors depicted military techniques throughout history, from the Romans to the Norman Conquest knights and on up through the Civil War and the two world wars. <br> <br> A more traditional event took place in Savannah, where about 40 members of the American Legion Auxiliary rode four miles out to sea to drop an anchor made of ten-thousand red poppies. The dropping of the poppy anchor dates back to 1919, when an Athens woman adopted the poppy as a tribute to fallen soldiers and dropped the first anchor off the Savannah coast.