Commemorating the War Dead

 This visitor from the Southland finds a reverent fascination while walking in Boston, a metropolis that exudes profound historicity across a New England land/city/scape expanding southward from Lexington and Concord down to Dorchester and beyond.

I mean, quite significant in the memory of this ole baby boomer was a certain unforgettable Senator/President from nearby Hyannisport, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. 

He’s the one who said “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Later, after that inauguration speech, he went over to an ancient European region, Germany, and advised the people there “Ask not what we (Americans) can do for you, but what, together, we can do for the freedom of man.”

But of course, he said all that before the conspirators of that era, 1963, shot him dead.

But I digress. 

Strolling, yesterday, the perimeter of Boston Commons reveals an abundance of Monumental commemoration for past Americans who died defending our nation and our ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

 Seems evident to me that the citizens of Massachusetts have done far more than their share of defending this nation against the destructive forces of tyrant kings, rebel slaveholders, bellicose nazis and fascist madmen..

On the uppermost corner of Boston Commons I find this monument to the 54th Regiment of Mass infantrymen who went down south during the war to liberate the captives of southern enslavement.

A few steps away and I am exiting the Commons, crossing the street and finding myself at the entrance to the Massachusetts State House, or, as we southerners call it, the State Capitol.

Having initiated our great American democracy experiment with a Tea Party back in 1774, the Bostonians have a longer history of collectively managing a gov. of the people—longer than us other kids on the American block. A stroll up and down and all around this Capitol opens up a vast array of fascinating historic paintings, portraits, documents, statues. Here’s the one I selected for you to see now: 

I chose this artistic portrayal of our American expeditionary force in Europe in 1918. It relates directly to the concluding chapter of my novel, Smoke, which is a story about the experiences of a young American businessman as he is traveling through western Europe in 1937.

Here’s the relevant paragraph from chapter __ of Smoke:

“       Now they were arriving at the battlefield. Jacques parked the car, leaned against the front fender, lit a cigarette. Mel and Philip walked through a stone arch, along a narrow, paved road lined with flowering linden trees, spring green with their large spadish leaves, sprinkled with small white blossoms. The sun was getting low behind them. Shadows of these trees had overtaken the narrow lane, turning it cooler than the surrounding fields, acres and acres neatly arranged with white crosses and gravestones, and continuous green, perfect grass between all. Having reached the end of the linden lane, the stepped slowly, reverently, along straight pathways, passing hundreds of silent graves on either side. The setting sun was still warm here, after their cool approach from beneath the trees. 

       At length, they came to the row that Philip had been looking for, the one he had read about in the army guidebook, where his father’s grave was nested precisely and perpetually in its own place in eternity:

 

Clinton Aaron Morrow

born July 13, 1895 in North Carolina, USA      died Oct 30, 1918

in defense of Oordenaarde, and the free world

Smoke

“. . .and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”