THE GARDEN

They call it the Garden, our national shrine, Arlington National Cemetery—and even now, on the sixth anniversary of the war in Iraq, the bodies keep coming in, thirty a day. For the men who do the burying, who actually touch the grief, grave digging is more than a job. It’s a way of reckoning with who we are now as a country
By Michael Paterniti; Photograph by James Nachtwey

We dug a hole in the Garden and laid the first body in. The sun rose, and we dug another in the clay. Put the second body in. Leaves bloomed and we dug a third, buried the body. The sun burnt everything brown in the Garden, and there were more bodies that went into the ground—on the hill, by the river, beneath the trees. We buried them through the swelter of summer and kept on when the leaves expired in the clutch of the first fall chill, through winter snow when our shovels sparked on the hard ground, until the spring rains, when the earth gave like pudding again.>>>>>Rest Here

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Ceremony to Recognize Vets

Not Eligible for Vietnam Wall Inclusion

WASHINGTON, April 9, 2009 One-hundred twenty-three American heroes from the Vietnam War era will be honored posthumously this month during the annual In Memory Day ceremony, according to Jan C. Scruggs, founder and president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.>>>>>>

A list of the honorees and their hometowns is available here