Check the NYTimes pictorial on America's Veterans this morning. This shot is of Spec. George Adamovich as a military policeman Over There. Courtesy of NYTimes and George Adamovich.
The moment has passed here in Arlington, the real one. You know what I mean- two minutes of silence observed at the Cenotaph in Whitehall at eleven o’clock sharp, the symbolic moment that the Great War came to an end on the Western Front. A cenotaph is an “empty tomb,” or monument erected in honor of a person, or group of persons, whose remains are elsewhere.
They have erected them in honor of Congressmen who died here over at Congressional Cemetery on the Anacostia River, and the dog walkers use them as fire-hydrant substitutes.
The famous one is in London’s Whitehall, though there is an impressive copy in Hong Kong, an example of how ephemeral things really are in this world.
In the UK, it is perfectly acceptable to talk about The Dead, capitalized, even if the word Glorious” has been dropped of late. There were so many of them, mostly from that one generation, frozen in time, and who never grew old.
To give some perspective on all this, British Empire servicemen who died numbered just about 1.1 million, a fraction of the total of what the warring nations inflicted on one another, but staggering for an island nation’s demographics.
Armistice Day has been through some changes since then. The magnitude of the second installment of the world conflict forced a change in name in the interest of inclusion. That is what brought The Greatest Generation into the tent, and the Korean War and Vietnam vets, and down to Gen X on the battlefields today far away.
“The Dead” as a phrase has a particularly evocative resonance this morning. The Departments of the Air Force and the Army have been pilloried for incompetence and callous disregard for The Dead. You are familiar with the debacle of the mis-identified graves at Arlington, I am sure. More troubling are the reports from Dover AFB in Delaware, where apparently unidentified portions of America’s Fallen were incinerated anonymously and dumped in landfills.
I am not going to go there, either in blame or horror. I know people in the funeral business, and the disposition of earthly remains is a complex business and not for the faint of heart, considering the astonishing manner in which some of us leave this life.
We don’t hear much about it, thank God, but over drinks at Willow with members of the Murphy Funeral Home there were stories that were enough to curl my toes. They cater to the suburban trade, mostly, but proximity to Arlington means they are a receiving home to many of The Dead who are headed there.
Besides, there is the change in how we treat those we love and remember. The notion of the grand memorial tomb has come down a bit in these times. With the rise of popularity in cremation, there are plenty of us who have been scattered willy-nilly across beaches and hills.
Or are perched on someone’s mantle, awaiting the right moment for transition. It is all part of life, which is chaotic and brief and wondrous in its complexity.
There is enough other stuff going that should be attended with righteous indignation that I guess on this day, 1100, 11. 11, 11, we can settle on something that we can all agree on.
Fixing Dover and Arlington are things we can actually do something about.
We will have a chance to observe two minutes of silence here in a few hours, and I will try to remember in honor of all those who fell.
Here and there.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com