"In Memory of the Fallen" Redux (each year since posting I've made additions and revisions)

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

Nearly 150 years ago, Memorial Day— first called Decoration Day— was set aside to decorate the graves of the men who’d recently died in battle. America was still reeling from the Civil War when Gen. John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, issued a proclamation in 1868, according to a PBS account of his decision.  “The 30th of May,” he declared, “would be an occasion to honor those who died in the conflict.” He chose the date because it wasn’t the anniversary of any particular battle.

Here’s how it was outlined in General Orders No. 11, Washington, D.C., May 5, 1868:

The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.

Memorial Day, a day to remember and honor the dead, the war heroes who sacrificed their lives to preserve freedom around the world. Not enough people pause. Not enough people remember.

Napoleon Solo made his nearly annual trek to Arlington National Cemetery to visit the grave of his war buddy and best friend, ‘Scotty’ Bob McKenna, with whom he served during the Korean War. This time his partner the Russian, Illya Kuryakin, took the drive with him.

The blond left Solo to his privacy to visit the grave of Scotty Bob MacKenna. Together they served in Korea and it was where Scotty made the ultimate sacrifice for his country.

Napoleon stood lost in thought, trying to recall his friend's face. The image was fading just a iittle but not forgotten, no never that.

He knelt, laying a red, white and blue wreath at the grave. Reaching out; Napoleon rested his hand atop the headstone as if it would give him a connection to the man who'd become his best friend. The friendship was short, but a memorable one. That thought finally made Solo finally, though it was still bitter sweet.

"So Bob, I hope you're at peace...well not completely. You're probably carousing in that big bar in the sky. You weren't exactly the peaceful type were you? We had some wild times, you me and Billy, didn't we? Someday I'll be joining you up there...I hope, but not now, not too soon."

Illya wandered off, passing row upon row of memorials to the dead, looking at their names and the dates they died.  Veterans of so many different wars all neatly put to rest in a beautiful spot that felt so serene... a fitting tribute.

Impressed by the simplicity of the place, the uniformity and the fact that one war was not placed in significance over another; Illya thought about his own country that had nothing really like it.

Here there were other monuments scattered about for those of importance, as well as an amphitheatre with it’s trellis’ covered in roses, and gently trickling fountains. It was an amazingly serene setting for so many who had met their end so violently.

He spotted small tokens left by so many graves, all marked by small American flags that fluttered in the breeze. Toys, letters, photographs and messages of love were everywhere. Signs that some were not forgotten, yet he noted there were few visitors.

There was an anti-war sentiment blanketing this country, but he saw no reason why that belief should dismiss the dead, those who sacrificed their lives for their country and served it with honor.

Illya looked up from one of the headstones, hearing the silence broken by the rhythmic clip-clopping of hooves. He watched as seven graceful, yet powerful horses passed by along the road. Astride four of them were uniformed soldiers mounted straight and tall.

The magnificent white horses seemed to sense the solemnity of their task, drawing a flag-draped casket upon a black casson along the sunlit lane to its place of rest among the fallen.

So many words came to the Russian’s mind, among them, dignity and sadness...

In Soviet Union, there existed the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow, to him a cold place... where burials were begun back in 1917 with pro-Bolshevik victims of the October Revolution interred there, buried in mass graves in Red Square.

After the last mass burial made in 1921, funerals on Krasnaya ploshchad' were usually conducted as state ceremonies and reserved as the last honor only for the notable politicians, military leaders, cosmonauts and scientists.

Burials in the ground were eventually halted, with funeral rituals now conducted as interment of cremated ash in the Kremlin wall itself. Actual burials in the ground only resumed again with the great Mikhail Kalinins funeral in 1946.

Still it was reserved for Soviet heroes, and not the everyday man, the soldiers who fought and died in the trenches. There were of course the mass graves such as Katyn, but they were Stalinist killing fields; nothing like this Arlington...a place to bury and honor the fallen and with such reverent ritual.

Except for the pomp and of official state funerals, death was not a prominent feature of public or official Soviet reality. Significant members of the Communist Party and members of the Politburo lay in state in the Hall of Columns on Marx Prospect. They were officially mourned for a designated period but their deaths were only of importance   because they signaled change in the relationships of power.

There was little to show that death was a fact of Soviet life. No funeral services were advertised; no obituary columns appeared in newspapers; no black hearses led parades of mourners to the cemetery.

Those places were hidden behind tall brick walls or at the end of small access roads beyond city limits. Only in villages, where old ways were still clung to, did one occasionally see a small cortege of elderly people, following a black wooden coffin down the main road to the village cemetery.

Moskva had its Alexander Gardens and the "Vechnyy Ogon', the eternal flame memorial built in 1960...there were many such eternal flames scattered across the Soviet Union, but nothing such as this national cemetery here in America, and Napoleon had told him this was not the only one.

Illya quietly walked up behind Solo; his eyes filled with marvel at such respect for the ‘masses,’ as it just did not happen this way in his own country.

He walked back to where the American stood at the grave of his friend and was about to say something when his partner turned to him.

“Hey, tovarisch...you and Scotty Bob, my two best friends by my side at last. I wish you could have known him,” Napoleon sighed. “I think you would have liked each other. You’re both my brothers you know.”

“Thank you, my friend,” Illya bowed his head slightly,” I am honored to be in such great company.”

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* ref Brothers Old and New http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7316278/1/Brothers-Old-and-New

Seoul Survivors http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7371168/1/Seoul-Survivors

and In Memoriam http://section7mfu.livejournal.com/321990.htm