Ponder what veterans’ sacrifice has meant for you
Dulce et decorum est… Rows of white marble markers cross beautifully maintained ground at U.S. veterans cemeteries. Since the end of the Civil War through Afghanistan and Iraq, American service members can be buried in national cemeteries. Not all Arlingtons, but just as precious.
Antietam in Maryland is forever the home of 4,776 Union soldiers. They are only part of the dead of the bloodiest day in American history, when 23,000 men were killed and wounded. ... Antietam was the victory that Lincoln needed to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, a military order that led to the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. These Union dead gave their last full measure so that others could be free, a legacy few of us will achieve in our lifetime . ...
In 1975, as a young Army Lt., I stumbled into an American cemetery near the French fortress at Verdun. The Aisne-Marne Cemetery is the final resting place of 2,189 doughboys who were sent to France to make the world safe for democracy. On the walls of the chapel, there are the names of another 1,060 soldiers listed as missing . ... My father’s brother enlisted the day after the declaration of war by Congress and went to France with the 35th Division, a National Guard outfit from Missouri and Kansas. He was gassed and shell-shocked and died within a few years of coming home from France. He lies in the cemetery at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas.
Above Normandy, at Colleville-sur-Mer lie 9,387
GIs killed crossing the killing zone to liberate France. ... In Luxembourg, George Patton’s grave is with that of 5,074 of his fellow soldiers. He is the only 4-star general buried at an American Battle Monuments Commission Cemetery.
In Hawaii, the Punchbowl contains the remains of 53,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. The missing are scattered in unknown graves throughout the Pacific.
The National Cemeteries also are the final resting places of veterans of Korea. Men fed piecemeal and outnumbered into dozens of delaying actions on the way to Pusan. Marines who broke the stalemate with a brilliant landing at Inchon. And men who battled in the cold and heat for three years to buy a fictional line with their blood. The numbers of the missing from Korea is heartbreaking.
Draftees and volunteers who gave their best for all of us in Vietnam are scattered throughout the country at various cemeteries. A New York times op-ed summed up the frustrations of the war when Robert McNamara published his memoirs, “The ghosts of those unlived lives circle close around Mr. McNamara, Surely he must in every quiet moment hear the ceaseless whispers of those poor boys in the infantry dying in the tall grass, platoon by platoon for no purpose….”
Dayton National Cemetery cradles the bodies of 59,000 veterans. You should take your kids there and ponder what their sacrifice has meant for you. We cling to the remnants of democracy because of the sacrifice of others. It is fitting soldiers are buried with soldiers because there are things only they can understand.