U.S. Memorial Day is observed the final Monday in May in remembrance of those killed in military service. It dates from informal wreath layings on the graves of dead U.S. veterans after the U.S. Civil War ended. It was first officially observed (then called “Decoration Day” – meaning “decorating” graves) in 1868.
I thought for a post to note Memorial Day this year with these next photos from a 2017 visit we made to Arlington National Cemetery, in northern Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C., where military dead have been buried since 1864…
Based on the famous Associated Press photograph of attacking Marines’ raising of the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi in February 1945, the 1954-built Marine Corps War Memorial (Iwo Jima Memorial) is just outside of the cemetery. (Within days after the photo was taken, three of the six Marines photographed had been killed in battle.)
Above: Just a few of the Arlington graves.
Among the earliest Arlington graves, within feet of Arlington House.
In 1861, Arlington House was the plantation seat home of a Colonel Robert E. Lee of the U.S. army, who had in 1831 married a great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, whose parents owned Arlington House. It became their marital home. She inherited it officially in 1857.
Located on a commanding hill, after slave-state Virginia seceded from the United States in May 1861 and joined the rebel southern “Confederacy,” the house and plantation were weeks later occupied by U.S. soldiers. (It was so close to D.C. it was indefensible for rebel troops.) By then, the Lees had already fled. While Robert, promoted to general in the rebel Confederacy, would command large numbers of rebel soldiers during the war that developed, Mrs. Lee lived with various friends and relatives farther south, including in Richmond.
The Lees never lived in Arlington House again. The property was confiscated during the war by the U.S. government for non-payment of property taxes. (U.S. authorities had even demanded Robert E. Lee turn up in person to pay them, and naturally he did not.) In late 1864, the government started burying on the property soldiers killed fighting Lee’s troops, and the larger Arlington National Cemetery grew over the subsequent decades from that beginning.
After the defeat of the rebellion in 1865, Mrs. Lee, who would die in 1873 (surviving Robert by three years), made efforts to reclaim the property, as well as personal items taken from it – including memories of her step-great-grandfather, George Washington – but those efforts went nowhere.
Noteworthy, those seemingly impressive pillars on the house are not made of marble/stone, but wood. Such was the case on most plantation houses modeled on the “classical” style in the once slave-owning South. All surface, no substance well-conveys the fraud that was the so-called “genteel” life of U.S. slaveowners.
The view down the slope from the approach walk to the house. The Washington Monument inside Washington, D.C., is plainly visible. That is how close Arlington is to D.C.
From just outside near the cemetery’s road entrance, you can also see the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol dome, just across the Potomac, in Washington, D.C.
The grave of British Field Marshal Sir John Dill. Dill served as military liaison from the United Kingdom to the U.S. during World War II. He and Prime Minister Winston Churchill didn’t get along, so Churchill sent him to Washington in 1941 because Churchill felt the Americans liked him. Indeed, having become very close to U.S. officers during his years in the U.S., after he became ill and died in Washington in late 1944, he was buried here. Currently, there are reportedly 75 foreign nationals buried at Arlington, and his grave is one of only two with equestrian statues in total at Arlington.
Lastly, this final one is not from Arlington. I took it at the Normandy American Military Cemetery and Memorial in 1995 (using a 35mm film camera)…
This June 6 is, of course, the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of France. The invasion beaches where some of these men died were not far from this spot. A reminder that many – even most – Americans who served and died abroad remain there forever.
R. J. Nello 