SLICE OF LIFE
Remembering a hero
BY V. GANGADHAR
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Nostalgia for the past and lessons for the future at the Arlington National Cemetery, U.S.
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Photo: AP
The hopes of a generation: John F. Kennedy with wife Jacqueline in 1954.
ON the morning of November 22, 1963, as a cold breeze and winter rains buffeted Ahmedabad, my reverie at the bus stop was broken with the paper boy shouting, "Vancho! President Kennedy no khoon Thaio" (Read about the murder of President Kennedy). The paper gave details of the shooting at Dallas where someone called Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed the youthful, handsome President of the United States. I cried at the bus stop, blindly boarded the bus when it came along and did not know how I went through the day at the college. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was my hero.
It is hard to explain his impact on my youthful mind. A keen student of international politics, I, like many other young people all over the world, felt that the Kennedy era would change the world. He was so different from the staid Dwight Eisenhower, his predecessor. He seemed to understand international problems better and had a special empathy for the young. JFK's inaugural address was full of glittering words and phrases, holding out new directions to the U.S. which was going nowhere in those days. He had formed the "Peace Corps" concept and two young American members of the unit were working in my college. I could still remember the glow on their faces when they talked about their new President. I had even given a talk on a public platform on how the Kennedy era would usher in liberal thoughts and attitudes but the bullets of an assassin smashed all those dreams.
Solemn feeling
Forty-three years later, on October 31, 2006, I and my wife stood in front of the of the late President Kennedy's grave at Washington's Arlington National Cemetery. On a raised, grassy mound were the graves of the President, his wife Jacqueline, baby son Patrick and a daughter. The spot was marked by a flame which burnt all the time. Next to the grave of the former President was that of his brother, Robert, who was his Attorney General. It is no wonder that among all the graves in Arlington, the Kennedy memorial attracts the largest crowds. The senior citizens in our group, who had lived in the Kennedy era, wiped their eyes and uttered prayers of their own.
Perhaps, the Kennedy era brought in exaggerated hopes. Events chronicled after his death did not speak well of him. The President was constantly cheating on his beautiful wife and put himself in a position to be blackmailed by the notorious FBI Boss, J. Edgar Hoover. Millions of words were written about his affair with Hollywood's glamour star, Marilyn Monroe. The media of those days did not write about these issues because of the general euphoria of the Kennedy legend and the wrong belief that the personal behaviour of the President had nothing to do with how he ran the country. Even on this score, JFK found that all his new vision about a world without war and co-operation with the Soviet Union could not be implemented because of the strong Right-wing lobbies in the U.S. The President made wrong moves and involved his nation in the political morass of Southeast Asia, sending military advisers to prop up corrupt regimes in South Vietnam and Laos. The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba was also a fiasco.
But then we live on hopes, and hoped that he would settle down and perform better during his second term. But that was not to be and I was left to read and ponder over the enormous amount of literature on the JFK era. The eternal flame on his grave. Will it provide light to the current rulers of the U.S. that might can never succeed?
More recent deaths
We were reminded of this as we watched the burial of one more American soldier, a victim of the Iraq war at the Arlington. Sedans, minivans and motorcycles led by a black hearse carried the body of the 20-year-old Marine, Lance Corporal Eric E. Herzberg, the 270th person killed in the Iraq war to be buried here. After the Marine Guard played Taps and fired a three-volley salute, his mother said that the ceremony to honour her son was "beautiful". His sister, standing by his coffin, recited an Irish blessing, "Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there. I did not die."
There is much truth in these sentiments. Many believed that dying for the sake of one's country was the most glorious form of death. But then, dying in a war which was needless, a war political leaders had dragged the nation into through lies and deceit cannot lead to martyrdom. Arlington, I thought, is an ideal place to bury war heroes like General Omar Bradley, one of the top generals of World War II, who died in his 80s. But is it the place for young soldiers, fresh from school, and victims of an unwanted war? In October alone, the U.S. lost more than 100 of its young soldiers and the Iraqis buried their dead in thousands.
Yet life goes son. The changing of guard at the cemetery showed us glimpses of America's cream of youth. The men who figured in this hourly ceremony were chosen with great care from the armed forces and brought dignity and nobility to the ritual. I learnt a lot about U.S. history on that day from the room of the house in Arlington where General Lee made the decision to leave the Union forces and join the confederates. Years later, from the same room he surrendered to the Union forces. That ended a bloody chapter in American history, a chapter preserved carefully at Arlington.
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