CNN has an article explaining one of the customs/honors at Arlington National Cemetery, the Riderless Horse. I was aware of the custom, but not that it had antecedents as far back as Ancient Rome.
The riderless horse of course is symbolic of the fact the fallen will never ride again. It shows that someone is missing, there is an empty seat at the table of life. The boots facing backward in the stirrups represent the departed's final look back at family, friends, and life.
Every nation has war memorials, often featuring heroic figures, horses, and the like. Post WWII some of them in the US started to include things like surplus tanks.
There is, however, a war memorial in the US that features none of these things, and was (and continues to be) quite controversial. Which is appropriate, as it commemorates the US fallen of what we call the the Viet Nam War (er, "Police Action") and the Vietnamese call the American War.
This is the view from above:
If you don't recognize it, well, that's because almost all pictures of it are from up close at ground level:
The focus is on the names. The memorial attempts to list by name, in order of their falling, every dead or missing-in-action soldier of the conflict (of course, with so many names the result has been less than perfect). This war memorial does not rise proudly into the air, it sinks into the ground.
The effect was profound.
People leave things at this memorial in a way they never did at others. The names were so personal - it wasn't just "this statue is for your father/brother/whoever", the person's NAME was there, right there, on a national monument, not because that person was a general or some famous person but because that person was part of this conflict. It was a hugely personal connection. People leave notes, items, medals, letters saying goodbye and letters talking about what has happened since the fallen fell. It says THIS is the cost of war - these are not abstractions, these are the people who died, who went missing, who never came home. This is not a monument to glorify war, it is a monument for mourning the lives war has destroyed. People come to this memorial to mourn. Big tough guys sob like toddlers over the names of their fallen comrades and friends, families cry over the names of their fallen, little children are lifted up to touch a name and told things like "This is the grandfather you never knew".
After that national monument was built other memorials to the Viet Nam fallen followed a similar motif:
Shippensburg, Virginia:
But the National Vietnam Memorial is unique - it travels. Well, the actual memorial itself does not travel, a replica of it does. Half size panels of the names travel the country. This is known as The Moving Wall:
A veteran visiting the national memorial in 1982 wanted to share the cathartic experience of visiting the monument with those unable to travel to the national site. Since 1984, The Moving Wall has toured the US. Demand was so high, in fact, that a second replica was made so there are now actually two Moving Walls.
Since the controversial building and opening of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial other war memorials in the US have also listed the names of the fallen as individuals. While this was not unprecedented prior to The Wall, since then it has been a virtual requirement. I believe it has also had an effect on "virtual memorials" (there is, in fact, a Virtual Wall Vietnam Memorial) on line where fallen soldiers are remembered with pictures and names and visitors can leave comments.
Of course, The Wall is not the sole cultural influence on how we mourn our dead and commemorate conflict, but it had an impact beyond what the creators intended, and in surprising ways.
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- PeZook
