Bringing Home America’s War Dead
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In the Seminole Indian Wars of the early 1800s, only those families who could afford the cost of sending their dead relatives’ remains home would receive them; the rest were buried where they took their last breath. Today, some 5,000 fallen soldiers have been flown home from Iraq and Afghanistan. In a lengthy look at the changes in how we care for the war dead, the Wall Street Journal reports that bringing our troops home is a fairly modern idea. Through the late 1800s, little effort was even made to identify the remains of dead troops; that didn’t begin until the Civil War, during which Congress created a network of national cemeteries and attempted to collect and rebury the remains of the more than 300,000 dead Union soldiers there. The Spanish American War of 1898 marked the first time soldiers killed overseas were brought home. During the two world wars, families could choose to leave the relatives buried abroad or have them sent back to the US, a process that took years. Ultimately, 171,000 of the some 280,000 identified World War II dead came home.
Related articles by MadMikesAmerica
- How We Bury the War Dead (online.wsj.com)
- Kenneth C. Davis: Memorial Day and Our ‘Hidden’ Wars (huffingtonpost.com)
- A Spend Management Memorial Day — Honoring Soldiers for Keeping Global Supply Chains Trading (spendmatters.com)
- Canadian honoured for heroism in U.S. Civil War (nationalpost.com)
- War of 1812 dead honoured in Halifax (cbc.ca)
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I remember going to Arlington National when I was a bit younger. What struck me first was the rows and rows and rows of monuments, all lined up perfectly, on these rolling hillsides.
Thoughts of how each one of those monuments represented someone that gave their life, all the people that were also affected by that loss…the wife or siblings or parents.
Also observing the Changing of the Guard at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Never knew such precision was humanly possible. Incredible!
Can’t imagine anyone not affected emotionally by such an experience as that.
I have seen the graveyards in Normandy and the Somme. Headstones as far as the eye can seen in the Somme area. All officer training should include a visit.
I want to go there. One day I hope.