Remembrance

The final study trip of GLOBE VI took us to Washington D.C. for 5 days over our fall break. We spent our days at corporate and governmental visits and our nights at social events. I thought this was one of the better study trips, both from quality of visits and social impact on our group. An example was wandering around D.C on Saturday in a group of 6. On the first study trip, this group would be comprised of students from a single school. This time all schools were represented. Our leisurely walking tour took us from Lincoln Memorial, via a host of other memorials, to the Smithsonian where I spent a happy 2 hours being 8 years old again and roaming around the National Air and Space museum.

The highlight of the tour was, surprisingly, the Korean War Veterans Memorial. Located a stone's throw from the Lincoln Memorial, it is comprised of 15-or-so life-size steel statues of soldiers in a triangular shrub area. On one side is a wall with pictures of soldiers and civilians, and at the top of the triangle there is a flagpole flying the Stars and Stripes and a reflection pool. The memorial was busy, but still small in comparison to the majestic Lincoln monument we had come from, and the lack of information about a war I know little about left me without any strong impression or a feeling of attachment towards the memorial.

Out of nowhere, an old man in full uniform stepped up to the flagpole. He created a little space from the crowd in front of him, raised a gleaming bugle into the afternoon sun, and started to play.  I felt a wave of emotion wash over me as I watched old veterans climb out of their wheelchairs, stand tall and proud, and with gruff, time-worn hands salute their flag. A handful of younger officers, family, and friends did the same. For 45 seconds, the bustling crowd of people stopped in their tracks, turned their head, and paid their respects. After the final tune had faded, the camaraderie evaporated, veterans once again became old men and sank tired into their wheelchairs, and the crowd continued as if nothing had happened.

I attribute my emotional reaction to a mixture of shameful ignorance, as well as humbleness towards extraordinary human hardship. The men in front of me were no older than I am when they were shipped of to the other side to the world to fight in a proxy war between the capitalist Allies and the communists of North Korea, the Soviet Union, and China. Although I have no contemplation of their individual stories, my initial indifference towards their contribution was duly put to shame. Seeing their emotions was enough to trigger mine.

Wars should be remembered, the people fighting them even more so. With the passing of Harry Patch, the last known surviving soldier from the WWI trenches, the "war to end all wars" has passed from memory to history. Educating the next generation on past horrors becomes increasingly difficult as the concept of war becomes increasingly abstract. The focus shifts to numbers rather than people, to macro-level goals and objectives rather than micro-level suffering and hardship. Books such as "Flanders fields" and monuments such as the Menin Gate make an attempt, but the apathy towards words such as "the Somme", "Ypres", and "salient", as compared to words such as "Auschwitz" and "Srebrenica", reflect the general ignorance of my generation towards wars no longer remembered.

As we continued our cultural tour of Washington D.C, we passed Thomas Jefferson's Memorial. A commanding statue gazes towards the Washington Memorial under a grandiose dome, with the sides decorated with his views and ideas on government, religion, and human liberties. We can easily sympathise with the notion that "men... are endowed with certain inalienable rights, among these are ... liberty", and we would do well to remember what has been done before us. A simple stone plaque at the Korean War Veterans Memorial read: "Freedom Is Not Free". Remembrance is.