Skip to main content

Arlington




The group visited Arlington today. We had a tour guide who made it a point to walk us through the cemetery to graves that each offered stories about Normandy that we might not have otherwise known. Our trip there lasted about three hours, and I'm appreciative of how it gave me a much better sense of how large this cemetery is. Here are the graves we visited as part of the tour.

A black veteran of the Normandy Invasion. 

One of the first women ashore at Normandy. She eventually set up communications at the Potsdam Conference. 

Commander of some of the Airborne troops who served at Normandy. 

Eventually served as commanding general in Korean War. 



One of Eisenhower's architects for the invasion. 

Eisenhower's boss. 

One of America's Hispanic veterans of the Normandy campaign. 
He cut his normal tour short so as to permit stops at the graves of two grandfathers of our Normandy Institute students.

Lauren's grandfather. 

Zac's grandfather. 
Of course we went by some graves of other famous figures.

Famous boxer who took down Max Schmeling.

Supreme Court Justice

Civil Rights Movement Leader and Martyr
When I go to Arlington I'm usually interested in someone who was a towering hero for me when I was a kid, Audie Murphy. I didn't ask the guide to work in a visit to his grade. But I was embarrassed that I walked by the grave of this hero from my youth without recognizing it was there.

At the grave of a famous fighter pilot, one who flew my favorite plane from the war. 
The trip today meant a lot more. Of course the memory of soldiers like Bill are on the minds of students and teachers today. Some of us came with some other soldiers and sailors on our minds, too. After stumbling past Pappy Boyington's grave and almost missing it, I started to be more observant, looking for graves and markers that might have more relevance to members of the group.

I thought this might be Dylan's airman's group, but it wasn't (right Air Force, though). 
I'll close with two photos, one of the cemetery near the grave of Lauren's grandfather and another of the group as we posed near President Kennedy's grave.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some Thoughts on Liberation

One of the markers placed by the French and Belgian governments to mark the path of the liberators.  My greatest takeaway from this most recent trip involves some refined feelings about liberation. I'm writing this post in a time of high cynicism. And the were matters of which one could be cynical back in 1944, the year in which Charlie fought and died. This trip, however, left me with renewed appreciation for what our country did back in that war, helping me refocus on what I've had the chance to see and do the past few years. Christopher is the military historian who accompanied us on this voyage. In one of our webinars this spring, he made an offhand reference to a piece of scholarship about the Holocaust he said was worth reading. It's entitled Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. It's heavy. I can't say I read every chapter. But I read most of it on our bus rides this summer. And I'm glad I did. My unassigned reading. Saying that Bloo...
1 comment
Read more

Day of Days

It's the seventy-third anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, D-Day. That means it is also the seventy-third anniversary of Bill's death. Bill, of course, is 1st Lt. Edmund William Duckworth. A map Lauren uncovered in her research.  To learn about the circumstances of Bill's death, I have done a lot of reading to better understand what led up to and took place on D-Day. I saw a post today on Facebook that discussed, quite well, the anxiety, unease, apprehension, and even frivolity that characterized the soldiers on the night before the invasion. D-Day was months in the making, and the soldiers who landed on those five beaches on June 6 had been preparing for the invasion for weeks or even months. In the immediate week before the invasion, they were queued up in embarkation areas and on ships, awaiting their chance to go. They were penned up for days. Knowing this adds more weight to the very difficult call General Eisenhower had to make, whether or not to go on June 6...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Navy Cross

Staff Sergeant Bruce Mathewson, Jr., distinguished himself on his last day with actions and leadership that earned him the Navy Cross . It was awarded to him posthumously: the medal itself was given to his son, Earle, who had just turned two before his father died. Accounts of Bruce's final day constitute the most fascinating components of his personnel file and other documents I've received from the National Archives. The citation for Bruce's Navy Cross.  The citation for Bruce's Navy Cross doesn't come up until page 330 of his 530-page OMPF, and I first came across the faded type-written document back in May when I was furiously skimming his files. A few pages later, there is a "Combat Award Recommendation Card" that offers a few more details of the event. It mentions that Bruce died of three gunshot wounds to his left side, that he was operating in a place with "Little concealment" and acting as a light machine gun section lead...
Post a Comment
Read more