In 1975, as a young Army Lt., I stumbled into an American cemetery near the French fortress at Verdun. The Aisne-Marne Cemetery is the final resting place of 2,189 doughboys who were sent to France to make the world safe for democracy. On the walls of the chapel, there are the names of another 1,060 soldiers listed as missing. No remains found, but still part of France and the memory of Americans. My father’s brother enlisted the day after the declaration of war by Congress and went to France with the 35th Division, a National Guard outfit from Missouri and Kansas. He was gassed and shell-shocked and died within a few years of coming home from France. He lies in the cemetery at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas.
Above Normandy, at Colleville-sur-Mer lie 9,387 GIs killed crossing the killing zone to liberate France. The second time in thirty years that Americans went to France. In Luxembourg, George Patton’s grave is with that of
5.074 of his fellow soldiers. He is the only 4-star general buried at an American Battle Monuments Commission Cemetery.
In Hawaii, the Punchbowl (Hill of Sacrifice) contains the remains of 53,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. The missing are scattered in unknown graves throughout the Pacific in places like Pearl Harbor, Bataan, Midway, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Bougainville, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa. And the blue waters of the Pacific.
The National Cemeteries also are the final resting places of veterans of Korea. Men fed piecemeal and outnumbered into dozens of delaying actions on the way to Pusan. Marines who broke the stalemate with a brilliant landing at Inchon. And men who battled in the cold and heat for three years to buy a fictional line with their blood. The numbers of missing American’s from Korea is heartbreaking.
Draftees and volunteers who gave their best for all of us in Vietnam are scattered throughout the country at various cemeteries. A New York times op-ed summed up the frustrations of the war when Robert McNamara published his memoirs, “The ghosts of those unlived lives circle close around Mr. McNamara, Surely he must in every quiet moment hear the ceaseless whispers of those poor boys in the infantry dying in the tall grass, platoon by platoon for no purpose….”
Dayton National Cemetery cradles the bodies of 59,000 veterans. You should take your kids there and ponder what their sacrifice has meant for you. We cling to the remnants of democracy because of the sacrifice of others. It is fitting soldiers are buried with soldiers because there are things only they can understand.
David Madden is a retired trial attorney, a mentor at the University of Dayton Law School and a spokesperson for the ACLU. He was an Infantry platoon leader and LTC in the JAG Corps. His book The Constitution and American Racism was published by McFarland Press in 2020.
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