Reality Check at a Military Cementery

Yesterday, on a whim, I decided to visit my grandfather's grave in Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery. For people who do not ever want to join the military, or ever be sent off into combat, visiting this type of memorial for fallen soldiers is a sobering experience, even if you do not have a friend or relative buried there.



Two things occurred while I was there that did not involve me, but could be used to teach people about one aspect of a foreign war that is terrifying on the home front: the military funeral and the mystery of the soldiers death.



Since the Pentagon has banned reporters from photographing the caskets of dead soldiers sent back for burial from Afghanistan and Iraq, the general public is shielded from these wars in a most dramatic way.



When I arrived at the cemetery, I went directly to the grave site finder and memorized the grave marker number. It was more difficult to find the actual grave site than I had thought it would be, and I ended up wandering around the cemetery in the wrong section, criss-crossing through hundreds of hedge stones of the named and dated eternally-anonymous dead of war.



Giving up on the strategy of somehow magically finding my relatives hedge stone, I returned to the grave finder to print an actual map of the cemetery. There was a man standing in front of the computerized grave finder trying to figure out how to use it, and crying quietly in a patient kind of frustration and grief.



In front of the main office of the cemetery grounds was a group of nicely dressed people waiting for the rest of their funeral guests. An older man stepped away from the crowd of funeral mourners to help the younger man, who was still crying in front of the grave finder.



These two events were very symbolic to me. The funeral crowd were obviously all invited and had to prove they belonged there to be allowed to join the funeral procession.



The younger man who could not operate the grave finder by himself explained to the older man helping him that his friend whose grave he wanted to visit had been buried the day before and he had only learned his friend had died that day.



I printed my map and drove over the where my grandfather's hedge stone is. On the way, I saw the younger man crying over the grave of his friend, in such remorse it seemed he could not sit or stand still.



After I visited briefly with my grandfather's grave the funeral procession that had been meeting at the front gate arrived nearby and the funeral guests solemnly got out of their cars and began gathering for the actual ceremony.



I do not know how or when these two veterans had died, or even their names or how old they were when they passed. And that, I think, should be of serious concern to everyone in this country, especially if you have a loved one deployed overseas, or living in a foreign country. Even when people learn of their friends or relatives death, the government and the military can invent any kind of heroic, or innocent-seeming cause of death when a soldier falls in a war zone.



I know how my grandfather died because I was with him and he died of natural causes. Whatever he experienced in his life, including his military service, he took with him to the grave only wanting in death to be as comfortable as possible, and not concerned at all with passing on any war story to a younger generation.



In this way, he kept his honor as a soldier even on his death bed decades after his war was over. Just like the thousands of other soldiers, and their families buried in that cemetery, including one man killed and buried so quickly one or two of his friends did not learn of his death until the day after the funeral.