By MEGAN WILDE
ALPINE – Just east of Alpine off Highway 90, hundreds of white tombstones now cast small shadows onto a grass-covered hill.
This memorial, called Arlington Southwest and fashioned after Arlington National Cemetery , was created by the Big Bend Veterans for Peace chapter as a reminder of the human cost of the Iraq war. Other Veterans for Peace chapters have created similar memorials in California , Massachusetts , Washington , Minnesota , Pennsylvania and Florida , but the Alpine installation is the only permanent one. The 11-member Big Bend chapter invites the public to a dedication ceremony at 2 p.m. on Sunday at the memorial site, on the north side of Highway 90 four miles east of Alpine.
“Out here it can be very peaceful. It can be very scenic and beautiful,” said Paul Schaefer, a Vietnam War veteran and Veterans for Peace member from Alpine. “We wanted to work with that, but also to bring home to people that the war affects this beauty as well. We’re not trying to throw anything into peoples’ faces, but it is a memorial. It is a remembrance. We do want people to remember the sacrifices that have been made both by American military and by Iraqi citizens.”
The tombstones at Arlington Southwest represent the number of Texas troops killed in the Iraq war; their names will be read and Taps will be played during the Veterans Day dedication ceremony. Last Thursday there were 354 tombstones, another was added this week, and more will be installed if other Texans die in Iraq , according to chapter member Eve Trook of Alpine.
“Hopefully this occupation will end and we can stop,” Schaefer said.
While Veterans for Peace supports ending the Iraq war, Schaefer said Arlington Southwest is not intended to be an anti-war statement. “The people that have helped in building this memorial have a wide range of political understanding,” he said. “And since it is a kind of a spiritual, artistic experience, each person I’m sure perceives it in a slightly different way. That’s what we would like to be possible for everybody.”
The group welcomes anyone, regardless of their political views, to remember, honor and grieve for those lost in war at the memorial, he explained.
Offering a place to grieve and feel sadness is especially important, according to chapter members, because the American government, by banning photographs of soldiers’ bodies being returned to the U.S., has made it harder to remember the lives lost in the Iraq war. That’s one reason why Brian Kokernot said he and his family decided to offer their land for Arlington Southwest.
“We felt it important to memorialize the deaths that war always causes, its inevitable consequences,” Kokernot said on behalf of his family. “This tribute is not just in honor of the Texas deaths but for all the deaths of this war. We need to be very thoughtful about these awful losses.”
Aside from Texan casualties, Schaefer said Arlington Southwest is also meant to be a remembrance of all the thousands of Americans and Iraqis who have died or been wounded in the Iraq war. According to Department of Defense estimates, more than 3,850 American troops have died and 28, 450 Americans have been injured. One study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimated last fall as many as 654,965 Iraqis had died in the war.
That sentiment was echoed by another Veterans for Peace member, Tom Curry of Alpine. “The reason for making Arlington Southwest, to me, is to show in a clear, dramatic way the cost and consequences of an unnecessary and illegal war started by leaders who have never seen military combat,” Curry, a Vietnam War veteran, said in a statement. “If we could have made tombstones to represent all the U.S. troops lost and all the Iraqi civilians lost, it would probably cover most of the Kokernot ranch.”
Curry and Mark Battista, another Alpine artist-builder and chapter member, suggested using papercrete for the memorial. Since June, about 55 Veterans for Peace chapter members, family, friends and supporters have spent two to three hours, two to three times a week, making the tombstones.
For Schaefer, making and installing the papercrete tombstones was a very personal and tactile reminder of the cost of war. “It’s a beautiful spot, particularly when the sun is setting,” he said. “Making the tombstones, painting them, putting them up so they won’t blow over with the wind, really brings it home, the ultimate sacrifice that these people have made.”
“In our lives, we often tend to forget our own preciousness, as well as that of others,” he continued. “When you’re doing something like the memorial, one is reminded that these people, most of them young, don’t have a future. They are gone.”
WELCOME
Photo: Tom Curry
