This Mullings was first written for Memorial Day, 2001 – four months before 9/11. Our son, @ReedGalen, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, was then a young member of the advance team in charge of President George W. Bush’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery on that day.
Arlington National Cemetery counts some 400,000 service members buried there since it opened in May, 1864 – about 159 years ago.
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The Mullings Director of Standards & Practices and I went to Arlington National Cemetery to attend the annual Memorial Day observance.
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The cemetery is directly across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial. These two historical, mystical, sites are connected by the Memorial Bridge.
At the entrance to the Cemetery there is a sign which asks visitors to keep in mind the true nature of this place:
Welcome to Arlington National Cemetery
America’s most sacred shrine.
These are hallowed grounds.
We made our way up and down the curving walkways, past the small groups of school-aged children and their chaperones listening to docents working to inspire the students.
We passed rows and rows of American flags which had been placed in the ground in front of each and every headstone.
Generals and privates. Admirals and seamen.
Each headstone gets its own flag.
Each flag, the same size.
Each life, the equal of every other.
We walked the familiar grounds, grass still damp from days of thunderstorms, the morning still cloudy and threatening. Having found what we were looking for, we paused and reflected.
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A low-key ritual takes place in the Amphitheater.
We entered, each taking one of the small American flags which were being handed out by elderly vets. We read the line from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address inscribed above the stage:
“We, here, highly resolve that those dead shall not have died in vain.”
On cue, the Air Force Band and Chorus began to perform. On cue, the sun peeked out.
Off in the distance, there was a barked order followed by the report of a cannon, then another order, another report. Twenty-one times; announcing the arrival of the Commander-in-Chief, President George W. Bush, onto the grounds.
During it all, the crowd stood silently.
At the playing of the National Anthem, military personnel snapped a salute, civilians put hands on hearts.
The President placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns which is located to the rear of the Amphitheater on a large, elevated deck.
We could hear, very faintly, the sound of taps.
The crowd was hardly breathing; as if breathing, alone, might drown out the sound of the bugle.
The President arrived on the stage without Ruffles and Flourishes.
The crowd was silent.
This was not a ceremony of pomp and circumstance, nor an occasion for soaring rhetoric.
The President spoke, quietly, of sacrifice, and of duty, and of honor. He spoke of young men and young women who would never live out their lives. He spoke of a last kiss between a husband and his wife; of a last wink and wisecrack of a brother to a sister as a bus prepared to leave; of a father and his son hugging for a final time as he got into line to board his flight.
Afterward, we stood at the Tomb of the Unknowns to watch the Changing of the Guard; the silent military ballet that takes place there 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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Arlington National Cemetery, on Memorial Day, has nothing to do with the sweep and grandeur of history, nor the gigantic commitment of resources to battles and wars; nor grand strategies and brilliant tactics.
It is the place where – and the day when – we remember the individual men and women who were killed at Bull Run, and Belleau-Wood, at Iwo Jima, on Omaha Beach, and in Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, and all the other un-locatable places with unpronounceable names where we have far too often sent young men and women to fight and, far too often, to die.
For us, Arlington National Cemetery, on Memorial Day, had everything to do with a single white headstone nestled in a neat row among all the other white headstones next to it, in front of it, and behind it.
Up hills and down swales.
It stands, along with the others, in silent acceptance of a nation’s gratitude.
Having found it, we paused. One among the 400,000. The one with these words carved upon it:
John Hugh Curran
Captain
United States Air Force
World War II
1914-1962
Flags in hand, standing in the damp grass, on a gray morning of Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery, we once again paid our respects to her dad.
And prayed silently, that he, here in the company of his comrades; in the company of heroes, might rest.
In peace.
