Spectre’s Sayings

I hope everyone had a pleasant Memorial Day yesterday.

Yesterday evening, I made my way to Camp Butler National Cemetery. My first stop was at my grandfather’s grave. Camp Butler is really a beautiful place. I think it’s a very nice tribute to veterans who have passed away.

One thing that is striking about the place on Memorial Day is all the flags. Along the roadsides, there are large U.S. flags flying from new aluminum flagpoles. There’s a little space at the head of a circular drive for ceremonies, and this space has the flags of the 5 armed services around it. The drive itself has the U.S. flag flying along the exterior perimeter, while the interior is lined with the flags of the 50 states.

What’s even more impressive is that upon each an every grave a boy scout or a cub scout placed a flag. The vast majority of these flags are, of course, U.S. flags.

From the road, however, I noticed one little section where I saw German flags.

So I got out of the car to take a closer look.

This little section of only two rows was the POW section of the cemetery. There were several German soldiers, a handful of Italian soldiers, and a single Korean soldier buried there. The dates on the headstones were either 1944 or 1945. I should like to learn a little more about how these WWII POWs came to be buried in central Illinois.

Behind - and at a 90-degree angle from – the POW section was the much larger Confederate section of the cemetary. This is not surprising. Camp Butler began its existence as a Union training camp, but was quickly turned into a POW camp during the Civil War.

The scouts placed U.S. flags on the graves of the Confederate soldiers too, but there were other, smaller flags on these graves – the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy:

Memorial Day is certainly a time to stop and reflect.