Veterans Gallery Memorial

Now that the exhibit is mostly finished, I thought I'd post some pictures of one of my favorite parts, the memorial. It is located at the center of the gallery and features 4 American flags surrounding a pair of combat boots at the base of a gun on its end with a helmet on top. It's a pretty iconic image, reminding each of us of the heroes that have fallen while defending our country. The CCHS memorial also features four different verses, each memorializing fallen soldiers in a different way. Read them below, and in the comments, share with us any poems, verses or songs that you would have included in this exhibit.

Mothers

Kay Boyle (1902-1993)

In the still of night

Have we wept.

And our hearts, shattered and aching

Have prayed.

In the cold, cold moonlight

Have we sobbed

And dreamed of what might have been.

And our hearts have bled from stabs

Given unheeding.

We are the women who have suffered alone -

Alone and in silence.

Where have all the flowers gone

Pete Seeger (1919- )

Where have all the flowers gone,

Long time passing?

Where have all the flowers gone,

Long time ago?

Where have all the flowers gone?

Young girls have picked them, every one.

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Oh, when will they ever learn?

No Man Knows War

Edwin Rolfe (1909-1954)

Needless to catalogue heroes. No man

weighted with rifle, digging with nails in earth

quickens at the name. Hero's a word for

peacetime. Battle

knows only three realities: enemy, rifle, life.

No man knows war or its meaning who has not

stumbled from tree to tree, desperate for cover,

or dug his face deep in earth, felt the ground pulse with

the ear-breaking fall of death. No man knows war

who never has crouched in his foxhole, hearing

the bullets an inch from his head, nor the zoom of

planes like a Ferris wheel strafing the trenches...

War is your comrade struck dead beside you,

his shared cigarette still alive in your lips.

In Flanders Fields

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.