A VALHALLA OF REMEMBRANCE
CONFEDERATE GENERALISSIMO ROBERT E. Lee’s family home was at Arlington, on the edge of Washington DC. During the US Civil War it was taken over as a Union Hospital, and as the wounded died, the estate’s grounds became their burial ground. This was a deliberate act of vengeance, rendering it incapable of ever returning to its former owners: its ground was sown not with salt, but with bones.
Arlington duly became America’s most renowned place of military honour, and an arboretum was planted on this hilly Virginian site. It has evolved and is now a sacred military landscape, its 650 acres hallowed by the presence of 14,000 veteran dead.
The UK has nothing quite like this. The National Memorial Arboretum near Alrewas is our closest equivalent — but without the bodies, without state funding, and with a stronger civilian presence. The brainchild of Commander David Childs RN, it is in the guidebook’s words “a living tribute that will forever acknowledge the personal sacrifices made by the Armed Forces and civilian services of this country”. This
