To the Center of What We Are

The rain had been coming down all weekend, and the clouds hung low and gray as Heidi and I stepped off the Metro at Arlington Cemetery on Sunday morning. We had been waiting for this trip for months. Heidi had never been able to see Arlington before, and I hadn’t been there in over 10 years. We were excited, but underneath the excitement was a sort of recognizance, something deep and unspoken. It was a big deal to us, to be here in this place. It was a day neither of us will ever forget.

As we stepped into the Women in Military Service memorial, the Wall of the Fallen greeted us with rows upon rows of portraits, set in four groups curving around the wall: every military member killed in the war since the beginning, through the end of 1994. Hundreds of them, their faces and their sacrifices immortalized in oils and airbrushes. Many of them had little notes or letters propped up beside them, tokens of goodbye left by grieving family and friends.

Wall of the Fallen

I fought back tears as I looked over them one by one, taking in their faces and names and hometowns. The bright-eyed young man from California who looked like he was no stranger to a surfboard, the broad face of a Marine NCO from the Midwest, the pretty woman who smiled proudly from her photo. Some of them were in groups with matching units and dates killed, together now as they were in their last moments. It was oddly comforting to me somehow to see them grouped that way, instead of alphabetically.

HMC Julian Woods
and others. These
men gave their
lives for freedom.

Near the end of the display, a face and a name caught my eye. HMC Julian Woods, age 22, was a Navy corpsman who “ran through a hail of gun fire to the aid of a fallen Marine with his medical bag in one hand, and his pistol in the other,” says CPL Aaron Kuck, who fought with Woods at Fallujah. As my eyes spilled over again, I realized that there were many more Marines here from that day, a whole group of them from the 1/3 who had fought together and died together. Knowing Aaron as a friend made this all the more real to me. I stepped back and took pictures of their faces, making a note to be sure and send these to my friend. They would mean a lot to him.

Heidi and I composed ourselves and stepped out on our way to the cemetery, and as we passed the entrance, a sign told us that “These are hallowed grounds.” Hallowed grounds, indeed.

We walked the winding pavement past thousands and thousands of stones as far as the eye could see, the cold air around us holding a sort of quiet reverence, seeming to insulate the cemetery from the busy world outside. Taking in the vastness of this sacred place, we couldn’t help but notice the details as well. We passed a man who blotted tears from his eyes as he stood against the rope in front of a stone. His wife and child hung back a few steps, quietly waiting. We walked under white dogwood trees whose flowers fell like snowflakes over the silent stones. We commented quietly when we saw a name we recognized from history.

Changing of the Guard

We finally came to the amphitheater that overlooks the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and our breath caught in our throats. This was the highlight of why we had come. We came around the corner and there he was: the lone guard, pacing silently, pausing only to face each direction in turn. The mat beneath his feet was worn, its path tread countless times by those sworn to guard the Tomb. We stayed to watch the changing of the guard twice, moving to the right side next to where they enter for the second one. We were within a foot of them as they passed, and their eyes never wavered to the hundreds of people who watched them, breathless and waiting.

Commander of the Relief

Staying to watch a wreath laying ceremony, by now we were completely entranced at the rigidity of the Army’s 3rd Regiment guards. Heidi and I had been able to focus on the beauty of their movements and the strength of their bearing enough to keep from crying, but as the ceremony wound to a close the bugler lifted his instrument. The haunting, plaintive notes of Taps filled the crisp air, and as we stood there with our hands on our heart, our faces shone with the tears of the thankful free.

Heidi received a white rose from one of the wreaths, and we carried it with us to the next stop. We knew just the place for it.

The cab let us off near the Vietnam Wall, and we walked to a little stand holding the book of names. I wondered as we turned the well-worn pages how many people had stood there before us, tracing down neat columns, searching for someone in the halls of the dead. Heidi and I were searching for four men we never knew, from a war before our time, and yet my fingers shook slightly as I wrote down their location.

We reached the panel–38 West–and I counted lines: 2, 4, 6, all the way to 15. There, I found him. Terry Clifton, member of the ill-fated Team 24 of 20 November 1968, one of the men whose death before I was born has affected me since I first heard their story a year ago. I traced the name with trembling fingers and felt a host of emotions as drops from the recent rain slid down into the engraving like silent tears.

Line 16 held Albert D. Contreros, Jr. Michael Dean Reiff and Art Heringhausen, Jr. were a few lines down. Each of them had a diamond in front of their names, signifying death in combat. Looking at this wall, it was suddenly real to me. It was tangible and permanent. Writing about these men, researching their last days so deeply has left us with a sense of knowing, a true understanding that they were more than abstracts, more than historical figures. They were people who our friends, their brothers-in-arms, loved deeply…and they were gone.

A volunteer came up and offered to trace the names for us, but we asked to do it ourselves. It was important to us, and we did it slowly, reflecting on the sacrifice these men made for us. The names came into view on the paper, and for a moment I felt as though my heart would burst. It was sobering and heart wrenching and beautiful all at once.

Heidi laid her rose at the foot of the panel, and its white purity stood out against the stark blackness of its background. It had come full circle for us now, and I silently thanked God that I had been able to come here and pay my respects to not just these four men, but all of the men whose names are immortalized on the wall.

The Korean War Memorial

We went on to see the World War II and Korean War Memorials, and each of them is more than beautiful. Their architecture is awe-inspiring, their inscriptions timeless, their truth absolute. One of them at the World War II memorial read, as one faced a wall of innumerable golden stars, “Here we mark the price of freedom.”

The day we spent in the most sacred shrines of our country’s history will live with me forever, for it takes me to the center of what I am.

I am an American, and because of the men and women who willingly bled for the red, white, and blue, I am free.

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