The moment will soon arrive: the centenary anniversary of the silencing of the guns at World War One. There is supposed to be more silence. You know what I mean- two minutes of silence observed at the Cenotaph in Central London’s Whitehall at eleven o’clock sharp, the symbolic moment that the Great War came to an end on the Western Front. A cenotaph is an “empty tomb,” or monument erected in honor of a person, or group of persons, whose remains are elsewhere.
They have erected them in honor of Congressmen who died here in the District over at Congressional Cemetery on the Anacostia River, and the dog walkers use them as fire-hydrant substitutes.
The more famous one is in London’s Whitehall, though there is an impressive copy in Hong Kong, an example of how ephemeral things really are in this world.
In the UK, it is perfectly acceptable to talk about The Dead, capitalized, even if the word Glorious” has been dropped of late. There were so many of them, mostly from that one generation, frozen in time, and who never grew old.
To give some perspective on all this, British Empire servicemen who died numbered just about 1.1 million, a fraction of the total of what the warring nations inflicted on one another, but staggering for an island nation’s demographics.
Armistice Day has been through some changes since then. The magnitude of the second installment of the world conflict forced a change in name in the interest of inclusion. That is what brought The Greatest Generation into the tent, and the Korean War and Vietnam vets, and down to the members of Gen X on the battlefields today far away.
“The Dead” as a phrase has a particularly evocative resonance this morning. The Departments of the Air Force and the Army have been pilloried for incompetence and callous disregard for The Dead. You are familiar with the debacle of the mis-identified graves at Arlington, I am sure. More troubling are the reports from Dover AFB in Delaware, where apparently unidentified portions of America’s Fallen were incinerated anonymously and dumped in landfills.
I am not going to go there, either in blame or horror. I know people in the funeral business, and the disposition of earthly remains is a complex business and not for the faint of heart, considering the astonishing manner in which some of us leave this life.
We don’t hear much about it, thank God, but over drinks at Willow with members of the Murphy Funeral Home there were stories that were enough to curl my toes. They cater to the suburban trade, mostly, but proximity to Arlington National Cemetery means they are a receiving home to many of The Dead who are headed there.
Besides, there is the change in how we treat those we love and remember. The notion of the grand memorial tomb has come down a bit in these times. With the rise of popularity in cremation, there are plenty of us who have been scattered willy-nilly across beaches and hills.
Or are perched on someone’s mantle, awaiting the right moment for transition. It is all part of life, which is chaotic and brief and wondrous in its complexity.
There is enough other stuff going that should be attended with righteous indignation that I guess on this day, 1100, 11. 11, 18, we can settle on something that we can all agree on.
Fixing Dover and Arlington are things we can actually do something about.
We will have a chance to observe our two minutes of silence here in a few hours, and I will try to remember in honor of all those who fell. And I am going to have a bloody Mary and think what my grandfather and his buddies thought when they found out they were going to come home after all.
Here and there.
Vic at an undisclosed location, at an undisclosed time, on his way Over There. Photo Socotra.
Copyright 2018 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com