traitorâ.
But times will change, as Dylan sang, and when President Clinton spoke at the dedication of the Singapore Memorial he undoubtedly did so for all Americans when he said, âWhen these men fought, they saved the world.â
Â
And so the world comes to pay homage.
On an unusually bleak October day one year and one month after the atrocity of 9-11, with a cold rain threatening, and an ill-tempered, contrary wind jagging through the long rows of headstones, a line of mourners wound down from the small, tree-covered knoll in Section 1 of the Arlington National Cemetery, a short walk from the grand colonnade of the Memorial Amphitheater. At the somewhat raggedstart of the line, maybe three hundred yards away from the first gentle rise of McKinnonâs Hill, a regular smattering of new arrivals joined those who would spend the next hour shuffling forward to say a prayer, lay flowers, or just stand quietly with their heads bowed. There is a point about a hundred yards from the grave where everyone stops talking as though they have entered the nave of a church. No marker signals exactly where this transition is made, and no instructions are ever issued to the visiting public, but those soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Regiment who tend the gardens of stone avow that every day the same thing happens. People fall silent at about the same point as they approach the hill.
Back down on the road, however, where the queue began on this unremarkable day, most folks were chatting quietly and possessed of good if not high spirits, given the solemnity of their surroundings. A few muttered darkly about the anniversary just passed. Two young men, cousins studying at the Catholic University, discussed the war in Iran with a young, pretty woman wearing an FBI windcheater. But mostly conversation never strayed far beyond private concerns, as strangers swapped details of their hometowns, their journeys and, more often than not, their family connection with the National Cemetery.
Some had distant ancestors buried there, men and women who died in the Civil War. Daytona Anderson, a young archaeology graduate at George Washington had come to visit her great, great, great-grandmother, one of nearly four thousand former slaves and residents of Freedmanâs Village who are buried in the cemetery. Anderson felt that while she was there, she should also pay her respects on McKinnonâs Hill.
âMy Auntie Desire served with Admiral Houston,â she said, by way of explanation for the detour.
Others had come to acknowledge great-grandfathers who fought with Pershing during World War One, and uncles and fathers lost on the Kanto Plain, in the bloodbath of Tokyo, or later at Inchon and Pusan. Like Anderson, they too had felt the need to make a show of public reverence in addition to whatever private calling had drawn them to Arlington. Separated from the Singapore Memorial by the vastness of the Pacific, they had chosen to visit what is now anaccepted âunofficialâ site for those wishing to commemorate the South East Asian War, McKinnonâs Hill.
Other mourners, whose loss was more immediate, and whose grief was still raw, spilled quiet tears onto the freshly clipped grass for sons and daughters lost in what very nearly became the Third World War. Ruth Ramshaw of Boise, Idaho, used one gloved finger to trace gently over a photograph of her only son, Michael, whose life ended thirty thousand feet above the South China Sea when the Chinese jet fighters he had drawn away from Admiral Houstonâs relief force finally put three missiles into his F-16, long after he had spent the last of his munitions, and two minutes before he would have run out of fuel. On either side of her, supporting a woman they had not met until today, Frank and Karen Muesburger of Council Bluffs, Iowa, had spent the morning at the Tomb of the Unknowns. Their son, Master Chief David Muesburger, is officially listed as Missing in Action, but
But times will change, as Dylan sang, and when President Clinton spoke at the dedication of the Singapore Memorial he undoubtedly did so for all Americans when he said, âWhen these men fought, they saved the world.â
Â
And so the world comes to pay homage.
On an unusually bleak October day one year and one month after the atrocity of 9-11, with a cold rain threatening, and an ill-tempered, contrary wind jagging through the long rows of headstones, a line of mourners wound down from the small, tree-covered knoll in Section 1 of the Arlington National Cemetery, a short walk from the grand colonnade of the Memorial Amphitheater. At the somewhat raggedstart of the line, maybe three hundred yards away from the first gentle rise of McKinnonâs Hill, a regular smattering of new arrivals joined those who would spend the next hour shuffling forward to say a prayer, lay flowers, or just stand quietly with their heads bowed. There is a point about a hundred yards from the grave where everyone stops talking as though they have entered the nave of a church. No marker signals exactly where this transition is made, and no instructions are ever issued to the visiting public, but those soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Regiment who tend the gardens of stone avow that every day the same thing happens. People fall silent at about the same point as they approach the hill.
Back down on the road, however, where the queue began on this unremarkable day, most folks were chatting quietly and possessed of good if not high spirits, given the solemnity of their surroundings. A few muttered darkly about the anniversary just passed. Two young men, cousins studying at the Catholic University, discussed the war in Iran with a young, pretty woman wearing an FBI windcheater. But mostly conversation never strayed far beyond private concerns, as strangers swapped details of their hometowns, their journeys and, more often than not, their family connection with the National Cemetery.
Some had distant ancestors buried there, men and women who died in the Civil War. Daytona Anderson, a young archaeology graduate at George Washington had come to visit her great, great, great-grandmother, one of nearly four thousand former slaves and residents of Freedmanâs Village who are buried in the cemetery. Anderson felt that while she was there, she should also pay her respects on McKinnonâs Hill.
âMy Auntie Desire served with Admiral Houston,â she said, by way of explanation for the detour.
Others had come to acknowledge great-grandfathers who fought with Pershing during World War One, and uncles and fathers lost on the Kanto Plain, in the bloodbath of Tokyo, or later at Inchon and Pusan. Like Anderson, they too had felt the need to make a show of public reverence in addition to whatever private calling had drawn them to Arlington. Separated from the Singapore Memorial by the vastness of the Pacific, they had chosen to visit what is now anaccepted âunofficialâ site for those wishing to commemorate the South East Asian War, McKinnonâs Hill.
Other mourners, whose loss was more immediate, and whose grief was still raw, spilled quiet tears onto the freshly clipped grass for sons and daughters lost in what very nearly became the Third World War. Ruth Ramshaw of Boise, Idaho, used one gloved finger to trace gently over a photograph of her only son, Michael, whose life ended thirty thousand feet above the South China Sea when the Chinese jet fighters he had drawn away from Admiral Houstonâs relief force finally put three missiles into his F-16, long after he had spent the last of his munitions, and two minutes before he would have run out of fuel. On either side of her, supporting a woman they had not met until today, Frank and Karen Muesburger of Council Bluffs, Iowa, had spent the morning at the Tomb of the Unknowns. Their son, Master Chief David Muesburger, is officially listed as Missing in Action, but
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