On Hallowed Ground

To observe the holiday, PBS airs this documentary that looks at American military cemeteries in England, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, Tunisia and Omaha Beach, and Normandy at 10 tonight.

There may be no place on Earth where silence commands the attention that a visitor feels in a military cemetery.
Even on a TV screen, the American military cemeteries in "Hallowed Grounds" have the power to turn a room quiet.

Specifically, "Hallowed Grounds" focuses on U.S. military cemeteries in foreign countries. Soldiers killed in World Wars I and II were buried there rather than brought home, so today we maintain some 23 cemeteries, mostly in Europe, with about 125,000 graves.

We all know the image: white crosses neatly patterned across green grass. But it's the sheer size of these cemeteries, the sense that those perfectly aligned rows of crosses go on forever, that speaks most eloquently to the scope of this sacrifice and loss.

"Hallowed Grounds" comes along at a time when the veterans of the "great wars" that filled these cemeteries are themselves passing into history. That makes this an especially appropriate time to pause and honor what they did, because if we have any hope of stopping the next war, or the war after that, it will be because we remembered the ones that came before.

As "Hallowed Grounds" talks with Americans who fought in those wars, or civilians who were liberated by American troops, it's hard not to read the urgent subtext: that no one sacrifices his or her life in war so the next generation can do the same thing.

Wars are fought in the somewhat ironic hope they will bring peace and the young men and women of the next generation can live instead of die.
We are not creating any more of these specific "Hallowed Grounds" today because military casualties are now brought home. But nothing about these cemeteries suggests the men and women below these crosses are lost. These quiet, sweeping grounds feel as much a part of America as Iowa or Texas or Vermont.

"Hallowed Grounds" also suggests that the local people of countries like France and Belgium, whatever their arguments with America, honor and respect the sacrifice represented by these crosses.

An interesting sidelight of this documentary is the monuments and walls honoring military personnel whose bodies were never found. They number in the tens of thousands - and for them alone, having memorials in the countries where they died feels like the right thing.

If you don't find yourself with much memorial time today, take an hour tonight for "Hallowed Grounds."