Military cemetery

“ The site was first used for burials by a French military hospital, and there is a group of French graves on what is now the eastern boundary of the cemetery. The earliest British burial dates from June, 1915. This cemetery had to be repeatedly enlarged as the campaign levied its toll on our forces. It now contains 9,795 British and Dominion graves, 892 French, 2 Belgian, 52 American, and 32 Chinese. The majority of burials took place from the Canadian casualty clearing stations at Remy. Of the French graves, 10 are those of unknown soldiers and 689 will remain in the cemetery. ”

“ As a rule, we had dug a grave for each man, but now there were so many of the killed that we had to put the bodies side by side in long trenches, which we made just behind the line. Quite a cemetery came into existence there, and we did our best to make it nice and worthy to be the resting-place of those who had given their lives for their country. ”

“ As I have stood in the great national cemetery at Arlington and have seen those silent battalions of the dead, I have thought how swiftly the reaper is doing his work and how soon in the scattered cemeteries of the land the ashes of all the soldiers of the great war shall be gathered to honored graves. ”

“ But in the distance, a mile away, the national flag waving invitingly bids reassurance. At length you stand at the entrance of the cemetery, entering through the strong iron gates of the thick ivy-covered brick wall, 12,782 known and 923 unknown men are buried within.
Many things at once interest you. Walks lead to every part of the grounds. Trees, shrubbery and flowers enhance the natural beauty of the place. Feathered songers of the South chant daily requiems. Each grave is marked by a white marble headstone, on which is generally carved the number, rank, name and state of the dead soldier. ”

“ A squad of soldiers were preparing graves for the next day. As they dug in the old, old soil of the cemetery to make a place for the new flesh come from so far to lie there forever, a strong odor of corruption and decay came up in puffs and drifted away down toward the little town lying below us, in its lovely green setting, still shaking rhythmically to the ponderous passage of the guns, of the troops, of the camions. ”

“ The sandy plain was still strewn with the débris of hastily deserted camps, and not far away was that significant spot which war leaves always in its track,—an humble cemetery, marked by many small white stones, showing the last resting-places of men unknown to fame, but to whom life was undoubtedly as sweet as it is to those whose graves the world honors with monumental shafts. ”

“ It may be true that we mount on our dead selves to higher things, but it is well to hold little Memorial Days now and then, and on the graves of our dead, especially [251] of those who died young in the flower of innocence, to leave a peppermint, as the soldiers leave on the grave of Miss Emily a print flag and a basket of geraniums. A cemetery need not be a mournful place. ”

“ They smile and they die. The vivandières allow themselves to be kissed behind the tombstones; the wounded men drink with their comrades, and throw wine on their wounds, saying, “Let us drink to the last.” And yet, in an hour perhaps, the soldiers will fight their way into the cemeteries, which their balls reach already, they too mad with rage; then the horrible bayonet fighting will commence, man against man among the tombs, flying over the mounds, desecrating the monuments, everything that imagination can conjure up of most profane and terrible—a battle in a cemetery! ”

“ A somewhat striking feature of this vast camping area were the military cemeteries, where hundreds of soldiers’ graves were crowded together in serried lines. Of course there is no sentiment in warfare, and soldiers live in the midst of death, but it struck me as somewhat unnecessary putting this burial ground alongside a road so frequently traversed by the troops when there is so much space elsewhere. ”

“ There are crowded into this cemetery in one place twelve thousand graves of Confederate soldiers, and in the centre of the ghastly plot there rises a huge stone pyramid, ninety feet high, erected as a memorial by the Southern women. Vines overrunning it almost conceal the rough joints of the stones. No name is upon it, for it was built as a monument for the unnamed dead. ”

“ Near the center of the cemetery is the grave of Henry Carpenter, a soldier in the Black Hawk War, and hard by are the graves of Civil War veterans, while the body of Archie White Eagle, a Winnebago Indian veteran of the World War, also sleeps in the enclosure. ”

“ The cemetery, which looks out over the sea and the beautiful shores of Europe, is full of the graves of soldiers who died of wounds received in the Crimean War, or of maladies caught in camp and in the trenches. Among them lie the bodies of many devoted women who worked to allay their sufferings. ”

“ In these sweet solitudes the morning passes quickly, and in the afternoon we go to the cemetery, which is about three miles from the town, to witness the decoration of the soldiers’ graves—for it is Memorial Day—the one day set apart in every year now and for all time for people to come to do honour to the dead who fell in the lost cause; nay, for the dead who fell on either side. Streams of people crowd the highways and byways, all flowing in one direction, and all mass together at the wide-open gates of the cemetery. ”

“ In a war where the full strength of nations was used without respect of persons, no difference could be made between the graves of officers or men. Yet some sort of central idea was needed that should symbolise our common sacrifice wherever our dead might be laid; and it was realised, above all, that each cemetery and individual grave should be made as permanent as man’s art could devise.{6}
Their Design and Care. ”

“ There were some old gray-haired veterans present with recollections of the defeat vividly stamped upon their memories.
The bones were placed in thirteen coffins, representing the thirteen original states. They were buried in one large grave in the village cemetery. Peace to their ashes. Beneath the sod in one common grave lie the bones of officers, soldiers, and citizens. May their memory live in the heart of every American. ”

“ Âtma drew breath more freely when they were through the city gates, and the bearers stepped out more quickly over hard stretches of sand and waste hillocks set with thorn and caper bushes toward the little cemetery which the musician had chosen. A few gnarled jhand trees decked with coloured snippets of cloth tied there by many mourners, a few nameless roly-poly concrete graves, a sprinkling of tiny turrets showing where someone was laid--someone whose resting place was unknown to all save the women who came thither every week to mourn--marked the spot. ”

“ Here mass is said by one of the conscript priests of the regiment, while his congregation kneel between the fir-trunks, giving life to the old metaphor of the cathedral-forest. Near by was the grave-yard, where day by day these quiet elderly men lay their comrades, the peres de famille who don't go back. The care of this woodland cemetery is left entirely to the soldiers, and they have spent treasures of piety on the inscriptions and decorations of the graves. ”

“ Here lie also many of the Leeds Rifles, seven even in one grave, killed evidently in the terrible encounter with the German machine-gunners in September '18. The German memorials go more into decay each day, but a man is paid to keep the British bright and clean and in repair, and his dog bites at the heels of the pilgrim as he walks from the dead to the dead. Facing both are the gaunt white ruins of the village church and the hideous smashage of the French communal cemetery, and there the people have put artificial roses in old rusty shell-cases in front of their stricken memorials. ”

“ Happy was the choice of this flower for a soldiers’ grave-yard, since it loves to spread its tapestry of gold and red over ramparts. The cemetery shelters 3,327 dead. They are in almost all cases men who died at the base hospitals at Boulogne and Wimereux. But some are the bodies of British seamen washed up on the coast and buried here. Many graves are of Royal Air Force members. The graves of the Empire dead number 2,551 of the Home Country, 277 Canadian, 88 Australian, 29 New Zealand, 10 Newfoundland, one South African, one Guernsey, 33 South African Native, and 5 West Indian Native. ”

“ Fifteen times the cannon have awakened the numerous echoes of the cemetery, shaken the wreaths of jet and immortelles, the light ex-votos hanging at the corners of burial lots, and while a reddish cloud floats upward and revolves amid the odor of powder across the city of the dead, mingling gradually with the smoke from the factories of the plebeian quarter, the countless multitude also disperses, scattering through the sloping streets, the long stairways gleaming white among the verdure, with a confused murmur as of waves beating against the rocks. ”

“ After a battle where the deaths mount into the thousands some field will be shut off for a cemetery and there the bodies are buried, each grave receiving some kind of a cross wherever it is possible, but here no names can be attached. There will be many homes in which there will be vacant places and where it will not even be known where the absent ones are buried. ”

“ It is said that there are about 15,000 bodies buried in one enclosure; even in death the white and the black are divided—the former are 104 buried near Arlington House, the coloured men's remains lie half a mile or more away. Another cemetery, containing 5400 soldier's bodies, is near the Soldiers' Home. These and many other places were visited; but we must leave Washington at last, and were carried at express speed to the Shenandoah Junction. We are on our way to Harrisburg. ”

“ One's eye returns along the shining rails until it rests again within the yard, in a far corner of which a couple of orderlies detailed for burial fatigue are hacking with picks at the hard, white earth. The graves are in prim, uniform rows—the soldiers' graves, I mean, for even here the military element swamps the civilian, and one hardly takes note of the private graves, they are so few. But the soldiers' graves are arranged with military precision, row behind row, each row containing twenty graves or more. ”

“ That no more calamity and sickness results from such a mode of burial, than is usually the case, is due, I believe, principally to the fact that great battles are generally fought on fields far from the habitations of man.
War, God knows, is bad enough, but far worse are the diseases that follow in its wake. The dead on the “field of honor,” which is soon naught but a vast cemetery, are, as I have said above, inhumed as rapidly as possible. There is no time to lose. Hurriedly thousands of fallen braves are thrown into large pits, and barely covered with earth. ”

“ A sepulchral monument, at the expense of the government, shall be raised over the remains of the Honourable Cæsar Augustus Rodney, as a memorial of gratitude.
“In the funeral rites to be observed towards so distinguished a citizen, the following orders shall be executed. A Battalion of Infantry, with four pieces of Light Artillery, shall be stationed at the place where the body is to be buried. As the corpse leaves the house of his decease, the fort shall fire a national salute. Another similar salute shall be executed by the Light Artillery, on the entry of the corpse into the cemetery. ”

“ We continued the slow march and music, until a short distance outside of the fort, when we ceased playing, and marched at the "Route Step," until we entered the cemetery, which was more than a mile away. There we resumed the slow step and doleful music, until we arrived at the grave. The coffin was lowered without any further ceremony, except the firing of three rounds of blank cartridges by the escort, across the grave. We then marched back to the garrison, while the grave diggers filled in the earth on top of the coffin. ”

“ That which takes place today at the National Cemetery in Arlington is a symbol, a mystery and a tribute. It is an entombment only in the physical sense. It is rather the enthronement of Duty and Honor. This man who died for his country is the symbol of these qualities; a far more perfect symbol than any man could be whose name and deeds we knew. He represents more, really, than the unidentified dead, for we can not separate them spiritually from the war heroes whose names are written on their gravestones. He—this spirit whom we honor —stands for the unselfishness of all. ”

“ Nor yet was it the cemetery, whereon for sheer, degenerate malignity the Germans targeted their heavy guns until they had broached nearly every grave, heaving up the dead to sprawl upon the displaced clods. One becomes, in time, accustomed to the sight of dead soldiers lying where they have fallen, because a soldier accepts the chances of being killed and of being left untombed after he is killed. ”

“ Without honoring the request of the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, to take an expedition to Andersonville to mark the graves of the missing soldiers, there could have been no cemetery at Andersonville. The cemetery which the Government now so worthily owns is a gift from our active corps of women.—Clara Barton. ”