Memorial Day

To the editor:

I recently came across a photo I took 59 years ago in a military cemetery in France. I was stationed about 30 miles away at an Air Force base.

On a beautiful Memorial Day in 1966, I decided to take my wife and two young daughters for an outing to the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery.

It is the largest American military cemetery in Europe, holding the remains of more than 14,200 American servicemen and women, most of whom died in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive of 1918.

Information at the visitor center tells of results of this last brutal campaign.

One-third of the Americans killed in the war lost their lives between Sept. 26, 1918, and the end of the war 53 days later on Nov. 11.

In 47 days of intense fighting, the 1st Army overcame formidable defenses to force the enemy to retreat.

Within the picturesque trees, like a formal French garden, an immense array of headstones rises in long, regular rows.

The cemetery sits on terrain captured by the 32nd and 5th Divisions. Nine Medal of Honor recipients are buried there.

All who visit such a site stand in reverent awe of the human sacrifice before them.

There are no party affiliations, religious differences, liberals, conservatives, or racial distinctions. In the ground are only heroes. Above the ground are only the awestruck beneficiaries of those heroes.

My photo that day is of my 20-month-old daughter standing beside the grave of Private Leland L. Ream, age 23, from Chetopa, Kansas.

He was killed on the second day of that campaign. Some information about him and the photo I took that day can be found at the Find-a-Grave website for Private Ream (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/55960348/leland-levi-ream).

Perhaps we can all go to a military cemetery on Memorial Day 2025 and find some time to quietly reflect what we might do as Americans working together with good will for the lofty goals upon which our country was founded.

C. Andrew Coomes
Orlando, Florida