The Old North Church, in Boston, MA, has a "Dog Tag" Memorial Garden. On a recent visit to Boston, coming across this memorial garden was a sobering stop on an otherwise fun day.
There is one dog tag hanging for every man & woman in the armed forces and civilians who have lost their lives in the Afghanistan & Iraq Wars. There were well over 3,000 tags. The saddest part? They left space for more.
The Old North Church, built in 1723, gained its fame when the church sexton, in 1775, climbed the steeple and held two lanterns as a signal from Paul Revere that the British were marching to Lexington & Concord by sea - and not by land. This event ignited the American Revolution.
That is absolutely sobering, isn't it! It kind of reminds me of the Vietnam Veterans wall.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this with us.
It's a very pretty memorial garden, but too sad that 1. We need one at all, and 2. there are so many people that have lost their lives.
ReplyDeletealso reminded me of the vietnam vets wall... thanks for showing this to me.
ReplyDeleteA very logical way to memorialize them; it makes it much more personal I think. And yes, very sober and sad.
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ReplyDeleteAt the edge of a local historic cemetery here — right out by the roadway — they've been putting up small headstones each year on Memorial Day and they leave them up for a couple of weeks. They go on and on and are only divided by markers indicating the year that group died. And these "stones" are only for these most recent wars. It's pretty sobering when you see statistics presented in a visual way like this.
ReplyDeleteWow. It is beautiful work of art as well as touching.
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