thedrifter
03-24-07, 07:47 PM
Americans keep Iraq war memorials up-to-date
By Scott Lindlaw - The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Mar 24, 2007 17:27:31 EDT
SAN FRANCISCO — The names of America’s war dead are etched in black marble with military precision, 46 to a column. Name, service branch, date of death in Iraq or Afghanistan — 3,217 so far, with another 300 going up next week.
Families of dead service members come here from around the country to visit the memorial built and maintained by the Marines’ Memorial Club. Resembling the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington, it is one of many markers, both public and private, that have sprung up across the country to honor fallen soldiers in real time.
It took the nation seven years of recrimination and reconciliation to dedicate the Vietnam wall, but this time around, Americans aren’t waiting for the shooting to stop. From beaches to bases, town squares to veterans’ clubs, they are building their monuments as fast as they can, even as the wars grind on.
On a rambling stone wall in Asheville, N.C., fallen soldiers’ names are engraved on rocks of varying sizes and shapes. In Santa Monica, Santa Barbara and the San Francisco suburb of Lafayette, the Iraq toll is measured in thousands of white crosses.
“Some of us are still young enough to remember the Vietnam War, and we see this war in Iraq as being very much the same sort of misguided adventure,” said Ken Ashe, past president of Veterans for Peace in North Carolina, an anti-war group that helped raise funds for the Asheville monument. “There was no hesitancy, nobody had to sit and wait to see how it played out and see how we were going to view this.”
While Vietnam looms large over this new national impulse to memorialize while lawmakers debate whether to commit more troops or set a timetable for withdrawal, the agendas behind this generation of monuments are as diverse as the memorials themselves. Rather than making a political statement, some shrines merely are meant to whisper: “Never forget.”
Officials at Fort Stewart, Ga., have planted a tree and installed a granite marker bearing a dead soldier’s name to honor each member of the 3rd Infantry Division to die in Iraq, as well as those killed while attached to the division. Lining Warriors Walk are 320 trees — about 10 percent of the total number of U.S. service members who have died in Iraq.
At Fort Bragg, N.C., the Army’s Special Operations Command has engraved the names of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan on a monument honoring comrades fallen as far back as Vietnam. In Hendersonville, N.C., thousands of replica dogtags representing fallen soldiers hang from the ceiling of an art gallery.
Another factor fueling the drive to erect monuments as the casualty counts rise is that the Internet and cheap long-distance service have made fundraising easier compared to after the Vietnam War, according to Ashe.
Oregon taxpayers and private donors financed the Afghan-Iraqi Freedom Memorial, where a bronze statue of a soldier kneels, hand outstretched, toward a point unseen. A black granite wall is engraved with the names, ranks and service branches of more than 70 soldiers and Marines with Oregon ties who have died in the two conflicts.
With no end to either war in sight, the designers of the Salem, Ore., monument left most of their wall blank, so future deaths can be added.
But one grim common theme among many other shrines is that they are running out of space.
The one in San Francisco, which the Marines’ club financed with more than $100,000 in private donations and is open to former and current members of all military branches, is already in the process of being expanded.
“Somebody asked me, how long is this going to go on?” said the club’s president, retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. J. Michael Myatt, as he surveyed the memorial that already takes up much of the 10th story. “Only God knows. But we’re not going to stop, even if we have to take it up to other floors, or this whole floor.”
Warriors Walk, too, is growing faster than anticipated. It runs the length of three football fields, and its second expansion encroached into the post’s golf course.
Fort Stewart spokesman Kevin Larson said the trees and markers reflect the soldier’s ethos — never leave a fallen comrade.
“We are indebted to them, and we do not want to forget them,” he said. “By planting a tree for our fallen heroes, we remember them, we never forget, and we never leave them behind.”
Larson speculated that the current impulse to build memorials in wartime is a legacy of Vietnam, when the nation seemed eager to forget.
“The sentiment of the nation — they’re more behind us this time,” Larson said, emphasizing that on this point he spoke only for himself, not for his base. “They saw what happened in Vietnam. They didn’t want to do that again to soldiers.”
Myatt helped conceive the San Francisco monument after hearing parents of war dead express fear that their children would be forgotten. Relatives of the dead often sit in silence, scanning the names, before seeking out a son’s or daughter’s inscription on the wall, he said. Eventually, they approach the wall to touch the black tile bearing their lost child’s name.
“They lie to you when they tell you time heals,” said Myatt, who served two tours in Vietnam and was awarded the Silver Star for valor. In the first Gulf war, he commanded the 30,000-member Marine ground force that captured Kuwait City from Saddam Hussein’s invading army. “It doesn’t heal, because it’s easy to scrape the scab off that wound.”
Officially, the monument here is non-political, meant only to honor sacrifice. But Myatt thinks it conveys another message. Pointing to one section of names, he ticks off their ranks — all enlisted men, most of them probably young.
“It’s the youth, and old men sending young men to die,” Myatt said. And, he noted, there are few Air Force or Navy members on the wall.
“I wanted people to know who is it that really pays the price,” he said. “It’s Marines and soldiers and [Navy] corpsmen and medics who are fighting this war, and they’re youngsters. It’s the truth and I wanted people to see that.”
“You shouldn’t be able to send young people into battle and die unless you’ve had someone die in your arms as a result of an order you’ve given,” Myatt said.
Ellie
By Scott Lindlaw - The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Mar 24, 2007 17:27:31 EDT
SAN FRANCISCO — The names of America’s war dead are etched in black marble with military precision, 46 to a column. Name, service branch, date of death in Iraq or Afghanistan — 3,217 so far, with another 300 going up next week.
Families of dead service members come here from around the country to visit the memorial built and maintained by the Marines’ Memorial Club. Resembling the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington, it is one of many markers, both public and private, that have sprung up across the country to honor fallen soldiers in real time.
It took the nation seven years of recrimination and reconciliation to dedicate the Vietnam wall, but this time around, Americans aren’t waiting for the shooting to stop. From beaches to bases, town squares to veterans’ clubs, they are building their monuments as fast as they can, even as the wars grind on.
On a rambling stone wall in Asheville, N.C., fallen soldiers’ names are engraved on rocks of varying sizes and shapes. In Santa Monica, Santa Barbara and the San Francisco suburb of Lafayette, the Iraq toll is measured in thousands of white crosses.
“Some of us are still young enough to remember the Vietnam War, and we see this war in Iraq as being very much the same sort of misguided adventure,” said Ken Ashe, past president of Veterans for Peace in North Carolina, an anti-war group that helped raise funds for the Asheville monument. “There was no hesitancy, nobody had to sit and wait to see how it played out and see how we were going to view this.”
While Vietnam looms large over this new national impulse to memorialize while lawmakers debate whether to commit more troops or set a timetable for withdrawal, the agendas behind this generation of monuments are as diverse as the memorials themselves. Rather than making a political statement, some shrines merely are meant to whisper: “Never forget.”
Officials at Fort Stewart, Ga., have planted a tree and installed a granite marker bearing a dead soldier’s name to honor each member of the 3rd Infantry Division to die in Iraq, as well as those killed while attached to the division. Lining Warriors Walk are 320 trees — about 10 percent of the total number of U.S. service members who have died in Iraq.
At Fort Bragg, N.C., the Army’s Special Operations Command has engraved the names of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan on a monument honoring comrades fallen as far back as Vietnam. In Hendersonville, N.C., thousands of replica dogtags representing fallen soldiers hang from the ceiling of an art gallery.
Another factor fueling the drive to erect monuments as the casualty counts rise is that the Internet and cheap long-distance service have made fundraising easier compared to after the Vietnam War, according to Ashe.
Oregon taxpayers and private donors financed the Afghan-Iraqi Freedom Memorial, where a bronze statue of a soldier kneels, hand outstretched, toward a point unseen. A black granite wall is engraved with the names, ranks and service branches of more than 70 soldiers and Marines with Oregon ties who have died in the two conflicts.
With no end to either war in sight, the designers of the Salem, Ore., monument left most of their wall blank, so future deaths can be added.
But one grim common theme among many other shrines is that they are running out of space.
The one in San Francisco, which the Marines’ club financed with more than $100,000 in private donations and is open to former and current members of all military branches, is already in the process of being expanded.
“Somebody asked me, how long is this going to go on?” said the club’s president, retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. J. Michael Myatt, as he surveyed the memorial that already takes up much of the 10th story. “Only God knows. But we’re not going to stop, even if we have to take it up to other floors, or this whole floor.”
Warriors Walk, too, is growing faster than anticipated. It runs the length of three football fields, and its second expansion encroached into the post’s golf course.
Fort Stewart spokesman Kevin Larson said the trees and markers reflect the soldier’s ethos — never leave a fallen comrade.
“We are indebted to them, and we do not want to forget them,” he said. “By planting a tree for our fallen heroes, we remember them, we never forget, and we never leave them behind.”
Larson speculated that the current impulse to build memorials in wartime is a legacy of Vietnam, when the nation seemed eager to forget.
“The sentiment of the nation — they’re more behind us this time,” Larson said, emphasizing that on this point he spoke only for himself, not for his base. “They saw what happened in Vietnam. They didn’t want to do that again to soldiers.”
Myatt helped conceive the San Francisco monument after hearing parents of war dead express fear that their children would be forgotten. Relatives of the dead often sit in silence, scanning the names, before seeking out a son’s or daughter’s inscription on the wall, he said. Eventually, they approach the wall to touch the black tile bearing their lost child’s name.
“They lie to you when they tell you time heals,” said Myatt, who served two tours in Vietnam and was awarded the Silver Star for valor. In the first Gulf war, he commanded the 30,000-member Marine ground force that captured Kuwait City from Saddam Hussein’s invading army. “It doesn’t heal, because it’s easy to scrape the scab off that wound.”
Officially, the monument here is non-political, meant only to honor sacrifice. But Myatt thinks it conveys another message. Pointing to one section of names, he ticks off their ranks — all enlisted men, most of them probably young.
“It’s the youth, and old men sending young men to die,” Myatt said. And, he noted, there are few Air Force or Navy members on the wall.
“I wanted people to know who is it that really pays the price,” he said. “It’s Marines and soldiers and [Navy] corpsmen and medics who are fighting this war, and they’re youngsters. It’s the truth and I wanted people to see that.”
“You shouldn’t be able to send young people into battle and die unless you’ve had someone die in your arms as a result of an order you’ve given,” Myatt said.
Ellie