Bill Shore’s Letters
Letter from Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery
Originally published: January 2007
I arrived at Arlington National Cemetery this morning about 10 minutes before it opened at 8:00 a.m. I had left my house at 7:35. That’s how quick a trip it is through Rock Creek Park and across Memorial Bridge. I fly over Arlington several times a week and pass its gates like we all do every time we travel between office and airport.
A guard asked me to wait behind a group of cars that had arrived for the first of the day’s 14 funerals. Most days at Arlington average 28 burials, some but not all related to the war in Iraq. I soon parked and walked into the almost empty visitors center just as it was opening, the manager of the bookstore pulling up the protective grill like any other shopkeeper.
It suddenly occurred to me that I ought to visit the grave of Geoffrey Cayer, the fallen marine whose remains were being escorted to D.C. on a U.S. Air flight I had boarded last July. I went to the information counter. Three women who worked there were just taking off their coats and exchanging the news of the morning like at any other office. I asked how to find Lance Cpl. Cayer’s grave site. “Year of burial?” one asked with all the enthusiasm of a Motor Vehicle Administration employee checking a drivers license. When I told her 2006 she walked me over to a computer kiosk, searched “Cayer” and printed out a map of the cemetery with “Cayer, Geoffrey Robert, Section 60, site 8411” printed at the bottom.
If John Kennedy’s gravesite and the tomb of the Unknown Soldier can be considered tourist attractions, then Section 60 is the part of the cemetery where the real work goes on. The temperature was 23 degrees, the coldest day we’ve had in DC so far this year. I had the 600 acres of gently rolling green hills nearly to myself. The silence felt eerie. I walked softly, as if a trespasser. I looked in all directions but saw no one.
Map in hand, it took about 15 minutes to get to Section 60, the quiet disturbed only by the constant rumbling of yellow bulldozers and back hoes shuttling back and forth to keep up with the work. I stepped onto the grass as one came down the road toward me through the early morning light, its steel jaw open wide, like the grim reaper. There were several areas along the way where workers were setting up mobile canopies and green felt covered chairs for funerals later in the morning. The same military structure that fashioned our forces into a fighting machine, had also created a machine to process grief efficiently and effectively.
I found Geoffrey Cayer’s grave on the outskirts of Section 60. He lay between two comrades, Matthew Phillip Wallace and Tulsa Tulaga Tuliau, both of whom had been awarded bronze stars and purple hearts. Tuliau was a master sergeant from American Samoa killed by an improvised explosive device. He left a wife and two daughters, Vanessa, 3 and Sophia, 2. Wallace died from burns, also caused by an improvised explosive device. The fresh black lettering stood out sharply on their white tombstones, in contrast to the names on the stones fanned out behind them which had faded, perhaps like the lessons of history.
Cayer’s grave had been in the last row until a few weeks ago. Now a new row claimed that status. From an airplane the lines of white stones seem to stretch the landscape’s limit and give the sense that perhaps the cemetery will soon be full. But on the ground it’s clear there still remain vast green fields to fill, like a crossword puzzle not finished until every blank space is occupied. Grass had not yet grown over Cayer’s resting place. The new grave in front of his had only a temporary plastic marker the size of an index card. Ten yards away lay a just-dug, jagged hole into which one could stare eight feet down at chunks of brown mud.
I walked through the crosses and up the hill to the eternal flame at John Kennedy’s gravesite. It’s the first time I’ve ever been there and been entirely alone. Well, not entirely. There was a police guard, back by the low granite wall, in uniform, talking loudly. I looked for signs of a cell phone but there was none. He was talking to himself, whether from sadness or madness, cold or solitude, I do not know.
I wondered why it had taken me so long to drive the short distance across Memorial Bridge and pay respects. I’m surprised more Washingtonians don’t do so. It’s symptomatic of how the war has been kept at such a distance from most of us, and how most of us have been content to keep it there. We live in a town that generates volumes of opinion about sacrifice and service, but sometimes what is required of us is simply to bear witness.
I stayed at the cemetery for about 90 minutes. Except for the gravediggers I only saw one other person, a man wearing a suit and a long black coat also visiting Section 60. This is where the activity is these days, although Section 61 can’t be far behind. We ended up only a few paces from each other but did not speak. It was just a quiet moment to bear witness, even if there was nothing one could say.
