An American Garden in a Foreign Land

[Richard]

Ron is an Associate Member of our SFA Chapter here in the DFW area.

Maj. Ron Poynter, an Apache helicopter pilot and later an Army Medical Service Corps officer, retired in August after 23 years service. He flew attack combat missions during the First Gulf War in Iraq. Before he left the Army he visited an American military cemetery outside Florence.

Richard

An American Garden in a Foreign Land
Ron Poynter, NYT, 11 Nov 2010

On a sun-baked hill just south of Florence is a vast garden. Its finely trimmed edges and broad grassy boulevard belie its solemn purpose. Unlike the famous Boboli nearby, this one attracts a slower stream of visitors. It is a cemetery, a garden of stones.

For those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan there should never be graves of unknown soldiers. Since the mid 1990’s all branches of the armed services collect DNA samples to identify them when comrades and dog tags cannot. And today the idea of leaving a soldier buried on foreign soil runs counter to the Warrior Ethos to never leave a fallen comrade. As soldiers serve on Iraqi and Afghan soil and die for their country, their families and each other, they will be brought home to lie near us in Veterans’ cemeteries throughout the United States.

The Florence American Cemetery and Memorial lies beside an ancient Roman highway, the Via Cassia, and spreads out in a fan shape falling from the rise of an emerald crest. Within its perimeter American soldiers are buried; it is one of the cemeteries filled with America’s fallen warriors laid to rest in foreign soil. According to the American Battle Monuments Commission there are 24 cemeteries in foreign lands where nearly 125,000 are buried. I visit them because they will never come home.

This cemetery holds more than 4,400. The men and women buried here are soldiers, sailors, and airmen who died in Italy during the last days of World War II and the rein of Mussolini.

Today its trees offer no shade to the rows of white crosses and six-pointed stars that gleam in the Mediterranean sun. The Italian gardeners who tend these grounds have trimmed back the usually full branches of oriental plane trees to spur new growth. What I expected to see were long lines of emerald green trees in uniform ranks. What greets me is instead harshly trimmed and near branchless. This rampart of stoic guardians line the field; a gauntlet of skeletons, standing watch on the fallen.

As a soldier I was drawn here to honor those who have served and died in a cause they believed in and in the company of men who shared their fate. The bond soldiers feel to each other is one not common to the rest of society. I look across this garden and am struck by the vastness of this place and the loss it represented to the country and its families.

These places are unique; meticulously maintained by the people that these men liberated. These cemeteries hold the stories, great and small, of Americans who volunteered to march long miles with little sleep and in desperate conditions. They fought for their country and families, but mostly for each other.

On one wall at this memorial is a map that is at once very familiar to a soldier. Made of colored stones, it is a mosaic depicting the Allied and Axis avenues of advance. Sweeping lines of red and blue arrows marked with the familiar numbering of the 1st Armored Division, 12th Air Force, 10th Mountain Division and others punctuated by timelines and terrain.

The visitor center is a small two-room building with a solitary American caretaker. The guest book is signed by visitors from across Europe and America. Many service members and their families stationed in Europe sign in from places like Ramstein and Vicenza but it is those in Italian that capture my attention. Many of the visitors are local Italians offering their thanks and honoring the sacrifice of the fallen, who gave them back freedom lost.

There are also over 1,400 names on marble slabs called “The Tablets of the Missing”.

Some of the dead have stones with no names and are marked only with the mournful phrase “Here Rests in Honored Glory a Comrade in Arms Known But to God.” These are the unknown soldiers, buried here with their comrades, whose families know only that they died but not where they rest.

The closer I got to leaving the Army, the more I wanted to make this trip. It was part of saying goodbye. This cemetery is the last of its kind, a place where men and women lie honored in a stone garden so well tended, yet far from home. I make this journey to visit my brothers, fallen comrades in arms, and honor these Americans who gave us freedom through ultimate sacrifice.

http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/...-foreign-land/

[rdret1]

Excellent and very touching. Rest in Peace Warriors.

[Dozer523]

My Great Uncle lies in the Brittany American Cemetery in St James France. He was a Staff Sergeant and the tail gunner on a B-17 assigned to 306th Bomber Group. His aircraft was shot down by a German fighter assigned to JG2 on 11-23-1942 during a mission against the St Nazaire submarine pens. They crashed into the sea. There were 7 KIA, 2 were POW.
George was my mother's favorite uncle. My mother was 12 years old at the time of his death. Mom remembers everything about the day the telegram was delivered, nearly 70 years later it is still the worst day of her life. Her fondest memory was his love for "his"Mae West". She thought he was going to marry a movie star. My mother has sent an Uncle, a husband, two sons and a grandson to war.

[greenberetTFS]

Another excellent post Richard......... In my old age I've become a "softy" I guess....... But I do remember my service days which seems so long ago now......
However my trust is completely in our "young tigers",they're holding the line for us now,God bless them..............

Big Teddy

[Gypsy]

Excellent and emotional article, thank you Richard for posting it.

[PSM]

Roughly 20 years ago I read The Long Gray Line: West Point's Class of 1966 by Rick Atkinson. One paragraph has ingrained itself in my memory all these years. And years to come, I imagine:

Although the lettering on the stone showed no signs of weathering, the manicured grass covering Tommy [Hayes] was well rooted. His grave looked no different from those of the men buried near him who had died twenty, thirty, fifty years before. Jack [Wheeler] found it hard to believe that his friend had so completely joined the dead.

I have an uncle buried at West Point.

Pat