by Deb Cupples | It's as amazing as it is heartbreaking. It looks like swaths of Arlington Cemetery were transplanted to Gainesville, Florida.
That's Memorial Mile: a one-mile grassy stretch along the sidewalks of North West 8th Avenue, lined with over 4,900 tombstone cut-outs: each bears a soldier's name, hometown, age, and date of death; each represents an American soldier who died in Iraq or Afghanistan.
When I blogged about Memorial Mile in 2007, there were "only" 3,844 tombstones.
The tombstones are arranged 1) by "theater" (i.e., Afghanistan or Iraq), and 2) by date of death. Signs mark various
events and dates.
It's troubling to see a visual representation of all the people who died after the sign indicating May 1, 2003, the date that ex-President Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq.
Memorial Mile was built by numerous volunteers and members of the group Veterans for Peace, whose Gainesville chapter is led by Vietnam combat-veteran Scott Camil.
This year, a new sign was added to the memorial: one marking the date that President Barack Obama was sworn in. Not everyone is happy about the new sign, Scott told the Gainesville Sun:
"'Some of my people are upset with it.... They don’t want to
beat up on Obama. But everything that comes after that sign is Obama’s
responsibility. Veterans for Peace is not a partisan organization.'” (G'ville Sun)
Many things have been said about Scott Camil: that he has integrity and adheres to principles are two of the most often repeated. Having known him for nine years, I can attest to that.
Yesterday's Gainesville Sun article also highlighted some details of Scott's history that I hadn't known:
"At dusk on Oct. 12, 1967, Sgt. Scott Camil, of Hialeah, was crouched in a bomb crater in South Vietnam’s Hai Lang National Forest in the middle of a ferocious fire fight. A concussion grenade landed nearby, peppering his legs with shrapnel and rendering one of them numb.
“Kane,” Camil screamed to a fellow Marine. “The bottom of my leg — is it still there?”
“You’re leg’s still there,” PFC Stephen Kane responded. “You’re all set.”
“Reassured, Camil ignored the injury and went back to his task of calculating the enemy’s location,” writes Doyle D. Glass, in his 2007 book 'Lions of Medina: An epic account of Marine valor during the Vietnam War.'
"Operation Medina was mounted to drive the North Vietnamese out of the forest, a goal not fully achieved. Of the 187 marines involved, 11 were killed and 75 wounded.
"Camil calls Operation Medina the worst days of his life."
I encourage you to read the rest of the Sun article, by Editorials Editor Ron Cunningham (another one of my favorite people).
It's fitting that author Doyle Glass likens Scott Camil to a lion: Scott has the strength, courage, and heart of a lion. He is also gentle as a month-old lamb.
For more about Scott's decades of war-and-peace-related work, see the Winter Soldier website.
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