In Search of a Sense of Place. November 1, 2006.

Washington

Autumn comes slowly in the nation’s capital. This is a southern city, below the Mason-Dixon line, which runs between Pennsylvania and Maryland. Look at the maps in the newspaper and you will see that the bands marking peak foliage slowly shift southeast through New England and the Middle Atlantic states. The city of Washington is low-lying and near the ocean, further moderating temperatures, particularly at night. The leaves turn and fall in the Maryland suburbs north and west much sooner than they do in the city itself, particularly the parts along the river, which is a tidal estuary at this point.

As I remember from my years in Hanover, New Hampshire, a bunny frost could happen by Labor Day. A killing frost was likely by September 15th. Better get those tomatoes in whether they are ripe or not; bring in the last of the lettuce and basil, too. Peak foliage comes in early October, makes a spectacular blaze of color and is suddenly over. By the end of October the trees are bare.

Down here in Washington, there has been no killing frost; no powerful rainstorm either, no all-day wind and rain that drives the leaves from the trees. The leaves have changed color oh-so-slowly, creating a carpet beneath my eighth-floor windows of a dozen shades of red, yellow, orange and even green. The weather has been generally warm, so warm that on November 1st I took myself and bicycle on a ride along the Potomac clad in shorts and T-shirt, stopping for a long afternoon at Arlington National Cemetery.

Autumn is a solemn time of year and cemeteries are solemn places, none more solemn than this enormous expanse on the banks of the Potomac. No one of my generation can forget the burial of President Kennedy here on a cold, sunny afternoon in late November, or of Robert Kennedy just a few short years later. We have no equivalent of Buckingham Palace, but we can watch the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers on a splendid hilltop site at Arlington.

I joined several hundred junior high school students this still and warm afternoon to watch a guard-change and wreath-laying. The soldier in dress blues was in the middle of his service when I arrived: twenty-one steps to the north, a pause of twenty-one seconds facing towards the tomb and the auspicious east, a pause during which birds chirp, lawnmowers buzz, jets float down from the north along the Potomac to land at National Airport, and, suddenly, unmistakably, three distant bursts of gunfire disturb the stillness. Then he resumes his march, now to the south, comes to attention, twenty-one more seconds, then north again; again and again, until relieved.

Relief comes in the form of another blue-clad soldier led by the same tall, lanky African-American sergeant I have seen perform this role several times before. Before the new soldier takes his turn, the ritual inspection of his weapon must take place. The rifle – or is it a carbine? – and bayonet look clean enough to perform surgery; nonetheless the inspection proceeds in several hundred precise movements. Like clockwork figures the soldiers flip the weapon, poke gloved fingers into it, glide immaculately white-gloved hands along it, spin it, open it, look it up and down, and, at the precise moment of transfer from private to sergeant, the weapon seems so rise upwards into his hands as if jerked by wires.

Since there was to be a wreath-laying, the sergeant addressed the spectators. I had never heard him speak before. In a voice loud, sonorous and precise, he asked us spectators to rise. We did. Twice two students from the different junior high schools came forward with him to present the wreaths, all in very precise, formal steps, as the sergeant instructed. He asked all uniformed military present to salute and the rest of us to place our hands over our hearts. Thus we all became not just spectators but participants in the solemn ritual that honors the sacrifice of those who came before us.

We, the living, remember and honor you, whoever you were, those known and unknown, the great officers and the common soldiers and sailors who gave and preserved for us these United States. Long after we are gone, others will stand where we stand and remember, in the same solemn ritual. Right now, as we witness this solemn precision, we are certain that the United States of America will last forever. Forever and forever will we and our descendents remember Bunker Hill and Gettysburg and the World Wars, our parents and our grandparents, and the more recent events that have made us who we are.

Thinking thus I wandered off, along rodeways named for generals, past endless white gravestones until I saw, a few hundred yards ahead, the black vehicles and uniformed attendants that mark an interment ceremony. I walked to within a hundred yards and paused, not wishing to disturb the mourners. A full military band stood on a low rise above them, along with an honor guard of about fifty. To my right stood seven soldiers with an officer, weapons at the ready. I could make out Air Force wings on the cobalt blue uniforms.

The band played “The God of Abraham Praise,” one of my favorite hymns and an indicator, I think, that this American hero being laid to rest is a Jew. At the conclusion of the hymn, upon orders, the soldiers fired in perfect unison. Again. Again.

I could feel the force of the blasts in my ribcage. The sound echoed over the hills and into the distance. Could any sound be more powerful more solemn, more final?

Wind stirred the leaves. Sounds of distant traffic and the buzz of lawnmowers came faintly to my ears.

The band played another hymn, which I did not recognize. Six soldiers, with a flurry of white-gloved movements, folded the flag over the burial site and with great solemnity handed it to an officer, who, with the same solemnity walked over to the widow, knelt and presented the flag. Then another flag was presented. And another. Where did all the flags come from? I was too far away to tell.

The band tucked their instruments under their arms. The honor guard and firing squad shouldered their weapons and slowly marched off, leaving the clergyman, a rabbi, I suppose (he wore no liturgical garments) to conduct the rest of the ceremony. I slowly retired, retrieved my bicycle from the rack and pedaled home in the last rays of the sun.

I had seen what I had come to see: the performance of solemn ceremony in time of war. There are burials at Arlington all the time, somewhere around ten per day. But now, and for several years now, about 100 per month are for soldiers on active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. These losses are like a slow drip, drip upon the nation’s consciousness, more than a World Trade Center’s worth of young men and women from all over the country.

When will it ever stop?