ARLINGTON, Va. Darrell Stafford inspected a freshly dug grave at Arlington National Cemetery recently and nodded. The burial plot, 5 feet by 10 feet, was ready for the coming ceremony. It was just one of 28 funerals that he would help oversee that day.
During his 32 years at the cemetery, Stafford has witnessed thousands of burials, and he has approached each one with military precision.
You see a 22-year-old mother at a grave site who doesn t have a husband anymore with her little kid, he said. He has also seen veterans with missing limbs visit comrades graves. In this business you see it day in and day out, and you can t just start to think that this is routine.
For many Americans, Memorial Day is the unofficial start to summer - an extra day off to have picnics or go to the beach. But at Arlington National Cemetery it is among the busiest, most solemn of times. About 150,000 people were expected to flood through the cemetery s black wrought-iron gates over the weekend, and the sentiment of the holiday is infused in the work done on the grounds throughout the year.
In his weekly address, President Barack Obama said Americans had sacred obligations to the men and women who have died in defense of the country.
We have to honor their memory, Obama said in a video of the address, released Saturday. We have to care for their families and our veterans who served with them. And as a nation, we have to remain worthy of their sacrifice.
Stafford, 56, manages a team of some 20 caretakers who conduct the burials of both coffins and cremated remains. A tall man with a graying beard and gruff voice, he said his team s attention to detail was vital, whether for the burial of a private or a general.
As Stafford looked over his six-page outline of the day s ceremonies, he got into his black pickup truck and drove to Section 57 to prepare for the morning s first service. An Army master sergeant was returning to the United States after he had been temporarily buried in Vietnam, where he was killed in action. His ceremony, called repatriation, would be conducted with full military honors.
The team was in the midst of attending to final preparations. Green matting was laid over the grass and a stand was set up to hold the coffin. Chairs were covered in soft green fabric, a bright red rose placed on each. Two formally dressed soldiers of the Army s Old Guard walked over, each carrying a tightly folded flag they would present to the master sergeant s daughters.
Before the arrival of the caisson, the horse-drawn cart that carries the coffin, the caretakers discreetly left the area to get started on another site.
Arlington, which is spread across 624 acres, is constantly developing more burial ground and columbarium space to meet needs. Since 1864, more than 400,000 people have been laid to rest here, with additional burials every weekday. That number includes presidents, active and former military personnel, spouses and their dependents.
After the Army band played its final song and the colors team retreated, the master sergeant s service came to a close.
Once the family left, Stafford and his team returned to finish their jobs. Under the watchful eye of a cemetery representative, the caretakers used a hydraulic arm on the back of a truck to move the coffin into a reinforced concrete grave liner, or burial vault.
As they lowered the coffin into the ground, they prepared to seal the 7-foot-deep grave with fresh dirt. After it was tamped down, a temporary marker of black plastic was hammered into the edge of the grave, a placeholder for a permanent headstone, which typically arrives about 60 days later. Flowers from the ceremony were placed on top of the dirt until fresh sod could be put on the plot.
It looks pretty good, but it will look better, said Stafford, inspecting the work. It will look better.
Eventually the grave will blend in with the seemingly endless rows of pristine burial plots, each precisely laid out with an elegant white grave marker.
Not far from the master sergeant s new grave, Frances Kuhn, 90, walked through the perfect rows of Section 60. With her daughter and son-in-law by her side, she searched for her husband s marker.
On the day of their visit, Lt. Col. Robert William Kuhn, who died early last year, would have turned 94. He was a pilot in the Army Air Forces during World War II, and his headstone reads, 99 missions, Pacific. Frances Kuhn said that her husband felt foreboding about flying mission No. 100 in his B-25 Mitchell bomber, so he decided to fly home instead.
His 100th mission was to fly home and marry you, said her son-in-law, Jim Tobias, 65.
As the family stood over the grave site reminiscing, another funeral was unfolding just across the section. The smell of gunpowder hung in the air after a row of pristinely dressed sailors fired three rifle volleys, and a bugle player performed his slow, steady rendition of taps. Soon, Stafford and his team would bring the burial to a close.
It s a place of heroes, in my opinion, Stafford said. Later, he added, This is for the guys who earned it.相关的主题文章：


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