Kevin Allardice
Mirror contributing writer
photos by Chris Zielin
The mournful trumpet salute, 'Taps,'
could be
heard up and down the beach, casting a somber spell on otherwise
average
Sunday at the Santa Monica Pier.
It came from a small stereo that
sat at the
edge of a field of nearly 600 white crosses that had been placed in the
sand just north of the Santa Monica Pier by the Los Angeles
chapter of Veterans for Peace Sunday
morning.
Behind the signs was an American flag
draped over what appeared to be a casket. Beyond the casket were the
crosses,
lined up in perfect rows, befitting its name: Arlington West Memorial
Project.
At each corner of the memorial was an American flag at half-mast.
On
the boardwalk, a sign displayed all the names of the American soldiers killed
in Iraq; next to each name were the soldier's age, rank, hometown,
and a brief description of the circumstances of his death. Nearby were
two buckets filled with flowers. People were invited to write the name
of a soldier on slip of paper and affix it to one of the crosses along
with a flower. By the end of the day, over three hundred crosses were
no
longer anonymous.
At the foot of the Pier stairway to the
beach were
three signs. The first read: Every cross represents an American
soldier
killed in Iraq.
The second read, Soldiers Killed:
589, plus
over 100 coalition soldiers wounded. 13,459 disabled mentally,
physically.
The third read: If we were to
acknowledge the
number of Iraqi deaths, the crosses would fill this entire beach.
This was the fourth week that
Veterans
for Peace displayed the crosses, and each week the number has grown.
The
Santa Barbara chapter of Veterans for Peace began the project the
Sunday
before Veteran's Day, and it quickly spread to nine other cities
including
Huntington Beach, Oceanside, San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Santa Monica.
Veterans for Peace chapters in Florida,
Maine
and Michigan have since followed suit.
Veterans for Peace plan on creating the
field
of crosses every Sunday until the United States pulls out of Iraq.
Regardless of one's view of the war, few
could
deny the visceral impact of the memorial.
"They don't always tell us their
position,"
said Frank Dorrel, one of the organizers, "they're just appreciative."
Dorrel has also published a book Addicted
to War, an illustrated history of the United States¹
militarism.
'We're anti-war," Dorrel said, "but
we're not
trying to get into a debate."
The memorial did spark conversation,
but, for
the most part, people quietly observed the site and paid their respects
by personally identifying the graves.
Mark Scully is another of the memorial's
organizers.
A veteran of the Vietnam War, he was an ardent supporter, and
volunteered
for service, so he recognizes the pro-war statements that young
soldiers
make today as they head overseas.
When he was their age, he was saying the
same
thing. But people change, even if times don't, and Scully is now a
passionate
antiwar activist. "It took me twenty-two years to turn one hundred and
eighty degrees,² he said. ³So I've been there, at every
degree."
Meanwhile, a man passing by, talking
on
his
cell phone, stopped to look at the crosses. He told the person on the
other
end what he was looking at and then held the phone up to the stereo
playing
"Taps."
"It's a place where people can come and grieve,"
Scully said.
And many did. Tears were commonplace.
Tourists
and beachgoers in bikinis and swimming trunks neglected some of the
more
photographed sights on the pier and turned their cameras toward the 589
crosses.
At the end of the list of American
soldiers
who have died was a quote from John Donne's Meditation 17:
No man is an island, entire
of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be
washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory
were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any
man's
death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore
never
send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
In a moment of unintended irony, a child
was flying a model airplane tethered by a kite-string down the beach.
It
was a replica of a War II bomber, and, carried aloft on the strong
ocean
breeze, it hovered just above the field of crosses.
