thedrifter
12-23-06, 08:59 AM
Hear the silence of Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery
Thomas Schaller, The Examiner
WASHINGTON - The weather was so nice Monday afternoon I decided to take some advice Bob Woodward offered during a speech he gave at my university last month.
Woodward encouraged us to visit Section 60, the part of Arlington National Cemetery where most of the dead soldiers and Marines from Operation Iraqi Freedom are buried. So I went.
Even with clear skies and warm breezes, Arlington is quiet in mid-December. Tourists who cascade from cars and Tourmobiles in summer have thinned to a trickle. The cemetery is not merely quiet, but empty. Other than around the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and John F. Kennedy's eternal flame, visitors have the site mostly to themselves.
Section 60 sits at the intersection of Eisenhower Drive and York Drive. Through the trees, one can spy the Pentagon a few football fields away.
I walked eastward along the section's northern edge, noting the graves filled mostly with Korean- and Vietnam-era servicemen. Details of the buried can be read on the front side of the familiar, rounded-rectangle markers, some of which include on the reverse the name of a spouse or child buried alongside.
As Section 60 gently slopes eastward toward the Potomac River, the final rows - where the Iraqi Freedom dead are buried - come into view. Four things distinguish these headstones.
Like bleached teeth, they are whiter than the older markers which have endured the elements far longer. Few of the deceased are buried alongside loved ones, another indication of how freshly dug these graves are and how young most of their occupants were when they died. The religious symbols on the headstones are also more ecumenical - the Christian cross still dominates, but you see trumpeting Mormon angels and the occasional Muslim crescent.
The biggest difference, however, is the sheer volume of flowers and memorabilia left by survivors. Seeing all these pictures, wreaths and seasonal poinsettias triggered in my mind a story Woodward recounted when he went to Section 60.
He met a mother who was reading a book to her dead son. She told him that when she first started coming to visit, her son was in the last row. He wasn't any more.
I then found the grave of Neil Armstrong Prince, the fatality that has so far most affected me. A native of Baltimore, where I teach, Sgt. 1st Class Prince was killed along with a 22-year-old Iowa man when an IED blew up their vehicle in Al Taqaddum on June 11, 2005.
In a city where black men are lucky to battle their way out of poverty and avoid being seduced by the twin lures of crime and drugs, Prince was a stereotype-buster. Husband, father of a young son, here was a proud African-American soldier with a first and middle names taken from a white American hero and a surname befitting the life he led.
The newest row of graves in Section 60 have no headstones yet because, I was informed, it sometimes takes three months after burial for them to be carved and installed. These graves are assigned temporary placards with essential information, like the name of Staff Sgt. Henry W. Linck at marker No. 60-8515. The 23-year-old native of Manhattan, Kan., had been interred that very morning, the dirt covering his coffin still damp brown.
One space over, I see that a hole next to Sgt. Linck's has already been dug for the next burial. Two parallel ladders have been placed across its opening, the wooden stake between them indicating marker No. 60-8516 - the spot reserved for one of the 26 Americans killed since Linck died, on Dec. 7, and who shall forever rest there.
Thomas F. Schaller is an associate political science professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and author of "Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South."
Thomas Schaller, The Examiner
WASHINGTON - The weather was so nice Monday afternoon I decided to take some advice Bob Woodward offered during a speech he gave at my university last month.
Woodward encouraged us to visit Section 60, the part of Arlington National Cemetery where most of the dead soldiers and Marines from Operation Iraqi Freedom are buried. So I went.
Even with clear skies and warm breezes, Arlington is quiet in mid-December. Tourists who cascade from cars and Tourmobiles in summer have thinned to a trickle. The cemetery is not merely quiet, but empty. Other than around the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and John F. Kennedy's eternal flame, visitors have the site mostly to themselves.
Section 60 sits at the intersection of Eisenhower Drive and York Drive. Through the trees, one can spy the Pentagon a few football fields away.
I walked eastward along the section's northern edge, noting the graves filled mostly with Korean- and Vietnam-era servicemen. Details of the buried can be read on the front side of the familiar, rounded-rectangle markers, some of which include on the reverse the name of a spouse or child buried alongside.
As Section 60 gently slopes eastward toward the Potomac River, the final rows - where the Iraqi Freedom dead are buried - come into view. Four things distinguish these headstones.
Like bleached teeth, they are whiter than the older markers which have endured the elements far longer. Few of the deceased are buried alongside loved ones, another indication of how freshly dug these graves are and how young most of their occupants were when they died. The religious symbols on the headstones are also more ecumenical - the Christian cross still dominates, but you see trumpeting Mormon angels and the occasional Muslim crescent.
The biggest difference, however, is the sheer volume of flowers and memorabilia left by survivors. Seeing all these pictures, wreaths and seasonal poinsettias triggered in my mind a story Woodward recounted when he went to Section 60.
He met a mother who was reading a book to her dead son. She told him that when she first started coming to visit, her son was in the last row. He wasn't any more.
I then found the grave of Neil Armstrong Prince, the fatality that has so far most affected me. A native of Baltimore, where I teach, Sgt. 1st Class Prince was killed along with a 22-year-old Iowa man when an IED blew up their vehicle in Al Taqaddum on June 11, 2005.
In a city where black men are lucky to battle their way out of poverty and avoid being seduced by the twin lures of crime and drugs, Prince was a stereotype-buster. Husband, father of a young son, here was a proud African-American soldier with a first and middle names taken from a white American hero and a surname befitting the life he led.
The newest row of graves in Section 60 have no headstones yet because, I was informed, it sometimes takes three months after burial for them to be carved and installed. These graves are assigned temporary placards with essential information, like the name of Staff Sgt. Henry W. Linck at marker No. 60-8515. The 23-year-old native of Manhattan, Kan., had been interred that very morning, the dirt covering his coffin still damp brown.
One space over, I see that a hole next to Sgt. Linck's has already been dug for the next burial. Two parallel ladders have been placed across its opening, the wooden stake between them indicating marker No. 60-8516 - the spot reserved for one of the 26 Americans killed since Linck died, on Dec. 7, and who shall forever rest there.
Thomas F. Schaller is an associate political science professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and author of "Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South."