HomeMy WebLinkAboutBrable24 '71WA JOURNAL
ARLINGTO.\' MEMORIAL
CEMETERY (G,\'S( — On and
on it goes, a dozen burials a
day, five days a week.
Even as the black Cadillacs
from the last funeral roll down
the shade -dappled drive, an-
other cortege is crawling uphill
inthe opposite direction.
Glancing from the car win-
dows, the mourners can see the
workmen with the power back -
hoe — there are no gravedig-
gers here — scooping out more
of the sorrel Virginia clay,
forming the neat rectangular
Pits for tomorrow's burial.
In the neighboring chapel at
Fort Myer, even as he horses
clop off hauling a caisson with
another, flag -draped coffin, the
mourners begin assembling for
the next funeral.
This is the Arlington Ceme- t
tery seldom seen by the tour- h
ists, clad in shorts and garish
sports shirts, with their jaws
grinding over cuds of gums.
They climb up to John F. Ken-
nedy's grave to have their photo gi
snapped before the "eternal cr
flame. " m
Then they rush over to catch of
the spit-and-polich punctilio at Ge
the Tomb of the Unknown Sol- 0
dier, where the guard changes wor
Saturday. May 30.1970
even, hour, on the hour. An
it's off to another spot on the
sightseers' agenda.
So vast is Arlington Cemetery
that the vacationers, wrapped
up in their sightseeing itinerar-
ies, and the mourners, obsessed
with their personal grief, do not
intrude on one another.
And neither group probably
ever gets to see much of Arling-
ton and to reflect on the worri-
some questions it evokee.
Suppose, for example, Pvt.
William Christman of Co. 6, 67th
Pennsylvania Volunteers, the
first soldier buried in Arlington,
and all the tens of thousands of
young men buried since under'
the plain, look -alike white slabs,
had lived out their lives.
How many would have left to
humankind so many benefits
hat to chronicle them would
ave required a big, granite
monument — like, the one for
Maj. Gen. George Miller Stern-
berg (1836-1915) over there:
Pioneer American Bacteriolo-
st," "Discoverer of the Mi-
oorganism Causing Pneu-
onia," "Scientific Investigator
Yellow Fever," "Surgeon
Hera], U.S. Army."
r how different would our
Id be now, we are forced to
d wonder, if Pv. Christman and
all the othershad not died in
alien fields and on "scarred
slopes of battered hills" for all
those causes.
Would the west have been
lost?
Would America be two na-
tions?
Would Cuba be a Spanish col-
ny? Would the world be unsafe for
democracy?
Would Europe still be gripped
by Nazi terror?
Would millions of South Kore-
ans be dead or doomed to live
under oppression?
In our own time would all of
Indochina be Communist -domi-
nated?
Undoubtedly many who lie
here would have scoffed at such
musing. For they could have
said, as did Justice Oliver Wen-
dell Holmes — a Civil War vet-
eran (he's buried over there,
near the Kennedy vravesite) —
on a Memorial Zay 8.. ,years
ago:
. Life is action and pas-
sion, it is required of a man
that he should share the passion
and action of his time at peril
of being judged not to have
lived."
Arlington can be a humbling
PI ace. MucT�j monument
to the futile Koman urge t blifee
remembered +Doer tine's
time. '
Take Waite' Quintin Gres-
ham. All of ,is achievements,
carved into yyhis monument,
seem to mocklhe passerby: "If
they don't remember me, they
won't remember you."
He was a Civil War general,
federal judge, Court of Appeals
judge, Postmaster General, Sec-
retary of the Treasury and Sec-
retary of State. Now he is al-
most as anonymous as the plain
"Unknown Union Soldier" bur-
ied next to Private Christman.
For all its reverential air, its
official dignity and its monu-
ments to nobility, Arlington also
,ontains a few remainders of
Human passions and follies.
In fact, the Army's official
guide pamphlet suggests that
the cemetery itself may have
been a "gesture of revenge."
Before the Civil War, the
place was "Arlington, estate of
Robert E. Lee. His magnificent
collonaded house — now called
the Custis-Lee Mansion — still
overlooks it,
In 1864, the pamphlet tells us,
Quartermaster General Montgo-
mery C. Meigs was directed to
find a suitable site near Wash- s
ington for a military cemetery.
Meigs had been Lee's close
friend when they served to-
gether as lieutenants. But
friendship turned to hatred.
Meigs considered Lee's com-
mand of the Confederate forces
an act of treason.
Meigs apparently surveyed
only one location: Arlington.
This insured that neither the
Custises nor Lees "would ever
again enjoy the serenity of their
ancestral home."
The Confederates managed to
get in their digs, too, if legend
is to be believed. In the ceme-
tery is a monument to Confeder-
ate war heroes and 400 dead are
buried there. Their gravestones
are pointed, so the story goes,
"So's no damned Yankees
would sit on them."
Death may be the. great lev-
eler, but Arlington once carried
the old military doctrine of
"Rhip" (rank has its privileges)
literally to the grave. The
shaded knolls overlooking Wash-
ington, across the Potomac,
were for the most park "Offi-
cers' Country." Private Christ-
man and the humbler men who
have followed him were buried
in serried ranks on the lower
lopes and flatlands. There was
also
section.
cials
veterans' high death rates,
a separate Negro burial
World War 11 veterans' climb -
But now, cemetery offi-
ing mortality and today's larger
say neither rank nor race
military services, space in kr-
have anything to do with grave
lington is getting scarce.
sites.
Before 1%1, any war veteran
But it is not these graves that
and his wife could be buried
tourists come there to see any-
there.
way. The elaborate Kennedy
Then Congress restricted it to
grave has increased visits to
those killed in action, or on pen -
Arlington immensely since 1964,
sions from military service, and
officials say. On an average
to veterans who are members of
day, 12,0M to 15,W0 — two mil-
the U.S. Supreme Court.
lion yearly — will stop.
Now 152,0W persons — veter-
But "very, very rarely" does
ans, their wives and children —
anyone visit the simpler grave
are buried in Arlington s 420
of the only other President bur-
acres. When this is exhausted
ied there — William Howard
there are % acres more for ex -
Taft, who was .also a chief jus-
pansion in what is now part of a
tice of the Supreme Court, Sec-
Marine base.
retary of War, governor of the
Philippines and provisional gov-
ernor of Cuba.
To operate Arlington, Supt.
John C. Metzler oversees a staff
of 190 persons, not including the
special ceremonial military
groups who carry out the burial
and funeral details.
There is even a resident horti-
culturist, Dr. Richard Baker,
who ministers the 6,000 trees
and shrubs, which occur in
about 200 varieties.
With the Vietnam War, the
Korean War, the World War I
covnty's Honor Rol
Also easing the burden on Ar-
lington are a5 other military
cemeteries across the nation,
plus others overseas.big
Some of these may grow
ger.
impersonal, assembly line meth-
ods that have been forced onto
Arlington. But no telisbeke y to
match its tran oaks shading
centuries -old no\ias,
bright azaleas and mag
thrushesand aiT es
andmockingbird sof
in Recent wars