Arlington National Cemetery

When I came to DC last year, I had the idea that Arlington was some way from the city.  Mainly because it was in Virginia and I didn't realise that the Virginia border was a few hundred yards from the Lincoln Memorial, and also because the city maps have an arrow on the very edge pointing out to Arlington with no indication of distance, in a "there be dragons" kind of way.  This time I decided I would make the effort to visit and was pleasantly surprised to discover it took little or no effort at all!

I find war cemeteries very moving.  I have visited the WW1 graves in France and Belgium, the WW2 cemetery in Leningrad (as it then was) and the American War Cemetery in Madingley, Cambs.  There is something incredible about rows of military graves, a poignant reminder of the cost of war.

Arlington is a bit different to what I expected: it is a National Cemetery rather than a War Graves site, so not everybody buried there was killed in battle.  Americans who served in the military and died much later are entitled to be buried with their fallen comrades, and so are their spouses and dependent children.  There are even graves of children lying beside vacant plots reserved for their military parents who are as yet still alive.

The history of Arlington is itself fascinating - it was a country house of a member of George Washington's family who married General Robert E Lee.  He left the property when he fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and the house was comandeered by the Union government.  It was used as a graveyard out of necessity during the civil war.  Much later the Supreme Court ruled that Lee's family were the rightful owners of the land, but instead of exhuming all the graves as was his right, the owner sold it to the US Government for a significant sum to be the National Cemetery.

The most famous parts of the huge cemetery are the graves of the Unknown Soldier and the graves of JFK and his family.  I had never known before that the Kennedys had lost two children, who are also buried with them, including a son who died at only a few days old a few weeks before his father was assassinated.  Jackie K suffered in more ways than I had realised.

What I found most interesting is that in some sections of the cemetery the relatives were allowed to choose their own headstone and in others the headstones are all uniform.  When I have visited war graves previously, I liked the idea of uniformity, it seems particularly poignant that all victims of war are made equal in death, and to look out at row upon row of identical stones all representing young men who never got the chance to grow old is especially moving.  I read somewhere that the British War Graves commission insisted on uniformity against some opposition, and yet now it seems so clearly the right decision.  I am less sure when it comes to Arlington, is there as much logic to having identical stones for the war casualty, the old man who died fifty years later, and the still born baby whose father is still serving?  You can't look across at a sea of white stones and think "wow, every single one was a young man killed in Vietnam" (or wherever).  Still, on balance I prefer the simplicity of identical headstones.  The older section with different stones is less impressive, it looks like some people are competing for attention on the basis of their wealth or rank, which is perhaps the American way but for me it detracts from the sacrifice the soldiers made.

The strangest thing of all from a European perspective is the complete lack of poppies.  Some symbols just don't make it across the pond I guess.