It was one of those mornings; no reason for traffic to be horrific, but it was, anyway. Pulling out of the garage under Big Pink I spied the traffic backed up on Route 50 East in front of the building. Since it is almost a mile to the first of the two lights that slow things down, it looked bad.

I wished I had time to stop and drop the top. It was a little chilly, but not quite overcoat weather and brilliant sunshine. Maybe the back of this endless winter is broken, I thought, and roared out of the lot.

All I had to do was get to Arlington, but I had let the morning slide until I was within the half-hour window for the mourning party to gather at the visitor’s center, and I was well on the way to being late.  I made an executive decision behind the wheel of the Hubrismobile and swung right to take Pershing parallel to 50 and defeat the back-up.

It was not a bad strategy; Pershing intersects the big road when it swings north to skirt the perimeter of Fort Myer, which is the fat on the green kidney of the national cemetery. The problem was that no plan survives first contact with the enemy, and traffic was just as bad further down on 50 approaching the I-66 bridge into the District, and with increasing anxiety, I had to bail out at Rosslyn at Meade Street, and hook a u-turn to and motor past the back gate to the Fort.

That is where the Buffalo Soldiers once had their stables, and past the edge of the cemetery near the Netherlands Carillion where the Freedman’s Village once stood under the bluff where the cannons had protected Mr. Lincoln’s capital.

I stayed parallel to the cemetery wall, having a Homer Simpson moment. “Doh!” There is no exit to the Visitor’s Center off 110, which, if I get interred in one of the niches in the cemetery-side of the imposing wall, will be a useful thing.

Right now it was a pain in the butt. There was no way to get off 110 except the Columbia Pike exit onto Washington Boulevard north of the vast gray bulk of the Pentagon.

Time for Plan B, as Diane Rehm calmly announced the top of the hour on the radio and I realized I was now officially late. The funerals run with military precision- they have to, since there are so many to be buried each day, and there are a lot of moving parts to the full honors of the ceremonial process.

For George, by way of example, the Army’s Old Guard had to be up and get the horses ready to haul the gun carriage, which meant the tack had to be pulled down, and the harnesses placed on the patient ponies, and the saddle horses had to be prepared, and uniforms triced up, just as they were on the buses bringing the Navy Ceremonial Guard and the Band to section 64 of the cemetery from the barracks at Anacostia.

Damn. It would have behooved me to get my ass in gear a little sooner, just as a matter of respect to all concerned.

Waiting at the light at the bottom of the bluff I realized I did not have to retrace my steps. I had a Cemetery Pass, courtesy of Cousin Jo Anne’s father-in-law, a WW II bugler who is now in the Columbarium. She gave the pass to me, thinking she lives in Florida and I might have more use for it as a local.

I made an entirely new plan.

I had missed the procession, but given the fact that it proceeds at the pace of the gun carriage, I might be able to sneak in the back gate and meet them at the grave, VFR-direct.

I drove up the hill past the Navy Annex, where I once worked when the Bureau of Personnel was located there, and through the gate to Joint Base Henderson Hall-Fort Myer, and then past the MCX Exchange building and through the back gate to Myer proper.

There was a time, no kidding, when real US Marines protected their service Headquarters compound from possible invasion by the US Army, but times and fiscal privation have finally brought sweet reason.

I swerved through the back gate, past the Rader Clinic and the Commissary entrance and the new Child Care facility, then past the PX and the new Chapel and the long line of support activities that lead to the historic Old Post where the Old Guard beds down, and the stables still hold the horses, and the Old Chapel sits stately near the back gate.

Rent-a-cops protect the Cemetery from vehicle traffic, but with a pass I could get through. The gates beckoned, but I was stymied by the official arrival of one of the ten o’clock ceremonial guests, who was being unloaded from a hearse in front of the chapel by an honor guard. I waited quietly and turned down the radio in respect.

It was a complete crap-shoot now, and I had only a vague idea of where Section 64 might be. There were at least three interments in the nine o’clock round, so there were all sorts of opportunities to get turned around inside the grounds.

Oh well. My fault. Should have started earlier, and I tried to keep the speed down as the guard glanced at my pass and let me drive through. I followed the bike route past the Amphitheater and the Tomb of the Unknowns and Arlington House, where Bobby Lee used to live when this was his plantation.

I drove down the hill, across the main entrance on Eisenhower Road, where the guard just waved me through. Construction has forced a detour on that main access road, and I could see a gathering under a mobile canopy to the south, but it looked Army. I kept going.

There is a remarkable amount of activity involved in the management of a national cemetery with two wars in progress and a generation of WWII vets passing away. Backhoes and heavy construction equipment riding around, security sedans, tractors, all sorts of stuff.

The place of the dead is quite a busy place for the living who support it. I was trapped for a while behind a honking-big front-end loader and a dump-truck exchanging views, driver’s window-to-window.

There was no point in getting anxious. I dropped the top and let the sixteen precision German motors do their thing. The cold clear air of early March in Arlington flood in. Eventually the workers finished their social business and the front-end-loader lumbered off and let me by.

I turned right, heading toward where the 9/11 folks rest, and I saw the horses and the gun carriage and a band in Navy uniforms marching up the road. A woman waved at me to say that I could not pass, funeral in progress, and I nodded and said:

“It is OK. It is George’s and that is what I am here for.”

She let me park the car, and I grabbed the Canon EOS 50D, and this is what happened:

http://www.facebook.com/jayare303

It was right around that time that a German national of devout Islamic faith was climbing onto a US Air Force bus parked on the military side of the ramp at Frankfurt-on-Main with a gun. He opened fire and shot four US Airmen, killing two.

Word was, when I happened to be listening to the radio after George had been buried and the reception held at the Fort Myer O Club, that Spokesmen were doing their best to be politically correct. “It is not immediately clear if the gunman’s motive was political,” they were quoted as saying.

Driving off post, I just had to shake my head in wonder at how hard we have to try to be so stupid.

Then, I wondered if the Airmen who were killed would be buried here?
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra