Most Americans know what you mean when you say Arlington.  Americans know you are talking about hallowed ground.  Yet even if you are American and you Know what Arlington is, I can tell you from experience that you don’t really Understand what Arlington is until you have been there.

Arlington started out as a family estate.  After the American Civil War broke out and Virginia sided with the South stating, “we cannot fight against our Southern brothers,” the Union Army took control of the estate for the duration of the war.  The Union had to secure the estate due to its proximity to the U S Capitol.  Virginia was a big prize for the Confederate States so they named Richmond their Capitol.  Soon both sides realized that it wasn’t going to be a short war; they also realized there were going to be many casualties.  As both sides came to terms with these two revelations, the war ramped up and so did the deaths.  It was decided quickly that a Union cemetery was needed and it was proposed that the “Confederate” estate located in Arlington was perfect for a couple reasons.  Not only was this estate close to the U S Capitol but burying soldiers on the estate would be a way to punish Virginia’s support of the Confederate movement.  Shortly after the decision was made, Union Officers were buried in the garden close to the home “to make the home unlivable.”  This is where I stand now.

It is going to be difficult for me to express all the different feelings, emotions, sights and smells I am experiencing at this moment.  I was one of those Americans who knew what Arlington was, now I’m getting an understanding of what Arlington is.  The smell of sweet roses as I enter the gates.  The rows of perfectly positioned headstones that continue past my comprehension.  The monuments to the fallen and unknown.  The quiet, even as I stand near hundreds who have come for many of the same reasons I am here.  If you let yourself, you can feel a heaviness and a calmness at the same time.  I feel it.  I want to understand why I feel this way.  I walk away from the trolley and the people and explore the grounds and my feelings at the same time.

My parents have talked about Audie Murphy.  There have been movies made about him and he became a movie star.  He is one of the most decorated combat soldiers of WWII, he earned a Congressional Medal of Honor.  He was a sharecropper’s son who quit school in fifth grade to pick cotton.  What made him the person he was?  How is it at 19 that he was put in a position to hold off an entire company of German soldiers for an hour by himself and then lead a successful counterattack while wounded and out of ammunition?  How did an uneducated cotton picking sharecropper’s son become a hero?

President John F Kennedy stood on the porch of Arlington House only days before he was assassinated and exclaimed, “what a beautiful view, I could stay here forever.”  He was killed only days later and is now buried at Arlington House where he will “stay forever.”  What did he see?  Why would he say what he said?  What did he know and feel while he stood and looked onto our Capitol?  What did JFK understand about Arlington?

I am getting emotional as I walk through the Gardens of Stone and look at the dogwoods in full blossom.  It is time for the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  I find a position where I can watch and quietly reflect on the precision and care taken by the guard, the sergeant and the guard’s replacement.  I think about the Unknown Soldier and I think about his Guard.  I’ve heard about Duty, Honor and Country, but as I stand there in silent contemplation I realize it’s much more than those things for this Guard and the others; it’s love.  The love for the Unknown Soldier is carried in every deliberate step, every turn, every movement of the rifle and every salute.  There can’t be any other answer for me as to why this solemn act is performed by soldiers every day, all day without end other than love.  I can feel it and it is making my chest heavy and my eyes well up.

I’m starting to Understand Arlington.