26 May 2009
Walk-Ons
(Stones at Arlington, just inside the Fort Myer Gate)
For whatever reason- I assume it was not enhanced security due to the North Korean nuclear test and those pesky rocket launches- they locked down Arlington Cemetery on Memorial Day morning.
The North has taken the pretext away about satellites and all that nonsense. I sense that they are getting desperate about preserving their queer little regime, and ensuring a transition to a third Generation of Kims.
I hope they do not get too desperate. Sooner or later they will be able to loft a payload in this direction, and that will not be a pretty thing.
I had intended to get a pass at the cemetery’s visitor center and drive down to the 9/11 plot. A couple old pals are there, and some others are on the way. I like to drop off some flowers to decorate the graves, not that mine are the only ones. It is an obligation. This is more than a three-day weekend for grilling and the pool. Some good people paid dearly for the privilege of our liberty from the office.
Traffic and security can be bad here on the best of days, and when possible, I try to pay my respect when it does not conflict with the schedules of the powerful. For reasons stemming from Rolling Thunder, the vast parade of motorcycles through the capital, I wound up trying to do it on the actual holiday.
I was early enough, right around opening. I had purchased a bouquet of seasonal flowers at the Harris Teeter on Glebe Road and approached the exit to the cemetery heading south on the GW Parkway. The traffic backed up on the off-ramp, unable to turn left onto the approaches20to the cemetery due to a long column of buses, apparently bearing participants to the official ceremony on the hill.
I realized that it was not going to be possible to get in through the front gate. I thought for a moment, stopped in exactly the place where the footpath crosses the off-ramp. I must have run that several hundred times, back in the day.
I'm resourceful, and as a veteran, have access to Fort Myer proper. I circled around and went up the back entrance to the Fort, resigning myself to the long walk from the Old Chapel down to the20plain, just as we did on the days that we buried my comrades. Then back up the hill again, the now-arthritic knees aching.
But what the hell. Duty is duty.
I drove back around the perimeter of the cemetery where I used to jog when I was assigned to BuPers. We always ran on the Fort Myer side of the low stone wall. Anything else would not be respectful to the quarter million white crosses on the other side.
I found a place to park and took my bouquet and walked up to the gate. The civilian guard (they are cutting costs, and soldiers are needed elsewhere) told me the whole facility was closed to foot traffic.
"No walk-ons," said the guard, looking at my retired ID card not unkindly. "You will have to take the shuttle to the event."
By that I presumed he was referring to the ceremony of the President laying the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. I have a lot of respect for the President's office, and his considerable intellect and charm, but I had no interest in the public ritual of respect.
Memory and eternity are intensely private matters.
President Bush, for all his failings, was kind enough to allow foot traffic some space. On the Memorial Days of his time in office,20I could enter by the back gate and walk the perimeter of the cemetery, well away from the Amphitheater and the security details. They let me mind my own business and leave me alone with the dead.
Down on the plain, the crack of the gun salute at the Tomb on the highlands is gentled by distance. The harshness of the sound is softened by the green grass and the gentle rolling hills.
I have some swell drugs that deaden the pain in the knees, and I don’t mind the walk. But that too was not going to work out.
I knew already what the word from the contract guard was going to be, and was prepared for it, though I had to try. "I don't want to go a ceremony," I told the guard. "I just want to visit my friends."
"I don't make the information up,” he said. “I just enforce it."
He softened a bit, throwing me a bone. He said I might be able to come back after three, when the grounds would be opened to foot traffic again. I thanked him for the information and walked back to the car with the flowers, tossing them on the passenger seat of the Bluesmobile.
There isn't any problem the rest of the year, so I suppose I can stop by on the way to work the next morning. The enhanced security to protect the leadership in the land of the dead is only to be expected. It is ironic that it coincides with the actual holiday designated for remembrance.
For the first time, it occurred to me that Arlington might not be the place I want to spent the days until the end of the world, or the Republic, whichever comes first. I'm not sure I am in favor of being a perpetual passive backdrop for whatever momentary lunacy happens to prevail in Washington.
I don’t blame this particular Administration. Security closed the Fort altogether for the inauguration, and Mr. Bush was still in charge for that. I imagine they were concerned that I might have a rocket launcher in the trunk, though I would have been happy to let them look.
I think there could be a perception in the Protection Community that some people might not be real nuts about all that is going on.
I don't know about that, and try my best to stay out of way. What I do know that not being able to walk the ground where I thought I was going to spend eternity on Memorial Day made me sad.
I wound up honoring the dead of all our wars by going to the Commissary on the Fort, since that was not closed to foot traffic.
Maybe I will go pay my respects tomorrow, when all the important people have gone back to work on the affairs of state, and it will just be me in the garden of white stone.
Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com