#0: Ghosts of Arlington Podcast Introduction

I was surprised when I looked for an Arlington National Cemetery-themed podcast a few years ago and could not find one. Now, after procrastinating long enough, I have decided to make one myself. Do I know anything about podcasting? No. But I certainly have the skills necessary for audio recording and mixing, right? Absolutely not. Then again, when have I ever let having no experience or qualifications stop me from trying something new?! I'll tell you when, never... well, at least rarely. So here it is folks, the official Ghosts of Arlington Podcast announcement!

This Week's Ghosts of Arlington are:

1.  US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Mark E. Stratton, III (Section 60, Grave 8840)
2.  US Army Staff Sergeant Darrell Ray Adams, US Army (Section 55, Grave 1369)

For more information, including links to stream the show, visit the GoA website: https://www.ghostsofarlingtonpodcast.com 

Transcript

Episode 0: Podcast Introduction 

I have toyed with the idea of a podcast highlighting the lives of individuals interred at Arlington National Cemetery for two years now and every step of the way, I have come up with excuses not to go through with it. Excuses like: I have no idea how to produce and edit a podcast, I do not have time to properly maintain it, or what if nobody listens? just to name a few; the list goes on and on. But that’s life, isn’t it? There are always reasons to stop you from trying something new, something that takes a little effort. How can I tell my own children to push through doubt and adversity to achieve their goals and then not do the same thing myself? So, in the immortal words of Admiral David Farragut, “Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead!” With that said, welcome to the Ghosts of Arlington Podcast <PLAY THEME> In this introductory episode, I want to talk briefly about what I hope to accomplish with Ghosts of Arlington. I first visited Arlington National Cemetery in late 2006. I was a freshly commissioned second lieutenant in the US Army attending a Basic Officer Leadership Course at Fort Lee, VA and at that time, I knew little of the history of the cemetery – I knew that John F. Kennedy was buried there and I was familiar with the Tomb of the Unknowns, but that was really the limit of my knowledge. During that first visit, I entered the cemetery through the iron gate adjacent to Fort Myer’s Old Post Chapel and walked past the many elaborate grave makers found in Section 1. I remember being struck by the large Celtic cross rising above a stone with the surname POND engraved on it. As I walked amongst the monoliths and obelisks on the north side of Meigs Drive, I looked south into Section 13, where I saw row upon row of the familiar white headstones traditionally associated with military cemeteries in the United States. Continuing east, I passed through a large intersection where a prominent equestrian statue declares Major General Philip Kearney to be New Jersey’s most distinguished soldier and I continued past the Old Amphitheater (which had yet to be renamed in honor of James Tanner as part of the cemetery’s sesquicentennial commemoration in 2014). It was at that point that I arrived at the tomb of the unknowns; not the famous one with the honor guard, visited by millions annually, but the first tomb of the unknowns erected on the property to honor 2,111 unknown soldiers who died during the American Civil War. 

After a brief stop to read the epitaph on the large marker set over the mixed remains from America’s deadliest conflict, I found the path that would take me to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, arriving just in time to observe the changing of the guard. The precision marching, exact movements, and solemn dignity with which the tomb sentinels carried out their duties were striking. Following the ceremony at the tomb, I continued on to the Eternal Flame marking JFK and Jackie O’s final resting place, and figured that I had seen the majority of what was to be seen. I departed the cemetery that day not realizing that before long, I would know two service members interred there, including a non-commissioned officer who would serve directly under my command in southern Afghanistan.

My second visit to Arlington came in early 2010; I was now a newly promoted captain just returned from my first deployment to Afghanistan and again stationed at Fort Lee for more military training. My parents had come to visit my family and I, and once again I walked the traditional haunts of the cemetery, but added a stop to Section 60 which has become infamous as the final resting place for many of those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. While I had been in Afghanistan, the commander of a Provincial Reconstruction Team and someone with whom I had trained prior to deploying, had been killed in one of the more peaceful regions of that country. This second visit to Arlington National Cemetery was more personal as I specifically sought out Section 60, Grave 8840: Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Mark E. Stratton II, killed in Afghanistan by an improvised explosive device that detonated next to his HMMWV.  Also killed that day were Senior Airman Ashton Goodman and Army First Sergeant Blue Rowe, laid to rest in Indiana and California, respectively. 

In 2016, shortly before I left the active duty Army, I was assigned to the National Capital Region – where I still live today - and have continued to visit Arlington on a regular basis. During one solo visit, I walked around the cemetery for several hours watching the tourists; observing horse drawn caissons lumbering down the streets, taking the deceased to their final resting places; and listening to ceremonial rifle shots reverberate throughout the grounds. Snow had recently fallen, and my footsteps crunched about me that cold January day while I walked to Section 55, Grave 1369. As I stood before the grave of Staff Sergeant Darrell Adams, I though back to our time together in the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, NY. I had been a company commander preparing to deploy with my unit to Afghanistan and he had been an experienced non-commissioned officer who was always willing to give me advise on how to have a successful command, whether I solicited the advice or not. Like any good NCO, once we were downrange, SSG Adams did anything I or the company first sergeant, asked of him; this included everything from running a helicopter landing zone to overseeing the forward operating base’s burn pit operations. He always approached these unglamorous and often thankless jobs as a professional, knowing that no matter the task, the mission needed to be accomplished. SSG Adams and I returned to Fort Drum with the rest of the brigade and we soon went on our separate ways. It was two years later when I learned that SSG Adams had been killed. He was not a casualty of enemy fire, or a training accident, but while out on a group motorcycle ride, he lost control of his bike and was killed on impact. Darrell Adams was a good soldier and a good man. Each time I visit him, I smile at the memories of his good-natured grumbling that I was going to find an even more thankless job for him to do and imagine him chiding me in his raspy voice for not bringing him a cigarette. 

I do not recall exactly when it hit me, but I had an epiphany during one of my walks at the national cemetery: Arlington is not only a collective memorial to the men and women who answered the nation’s call for help in its darkest hours, but a place littered with individual stories; some stories that were cut short, and some that continued long after the guns fell silent.  In Hiroshima Notes, Nobel laurite Ken-za-bu-ro O-e wrote that “the dead can survive as part of the lives of those that still live.” Ernest Hemingway, whose prose were often influenced by his time serving as a Red Cross ambulance driver during World War I, once said: “Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.” It is my humble hope that I can provide some of those details; that is why I write – so that my fallen comrades, these ghosts of Arlington, may live on.

As Benjamin Franklin said: “Fear not death for the sooner we die, the longer we shall be immortal.”

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