pNATCHEZ — Dressed in fatigues and with the American flag, Herbert Williams was ready to march for Memorial Day.

“We’ve been doing this for more than 50 years,” Williams said of the Memorial Day march, standing near the intersection of North Magnolia and Alabama streets in Vidalia.

And while Williams and a handful of others were some of the first on the streets early Memorial Day morning, the crowd quickly swelled.

Just before 9 a.m. the neighborhood was buzzing with marchers and onlookers.

“These guys went out there and a lot of them died for this country,” said Williams, an Army veteran, of those in the U.S. military. “This is how we can show them that we care, that we know what they did, and we haven’t forgotten them — for the past and the future.”

And as the crowd continued to grow Albert Davis was making his way through the mass of people in his motorized-wheelchair.

Davis, a fellow Army veteran, was in the Vietnam War and said he cannot imagine not celebrating Memorial Day.

“This country has lost a lot of good men,” Davis said. “There aren’t many people willing to give their lives for something. I gave, but I didn’t give as much as some of them did.”

Minutes later residents from across the Miss-Lou lined up behind a waving flag, the band began started playing and the crowd began moving.

Hundreds made the seven-and-a-half mile walk from the Vidalia neighborhood to the Natchez National Cemetery.

“It’s good to see these people,” Davis said. “It’s good to know they haven’t forgotten what this day is about.”