Milsurp After Hours

We were talking just now on the chat about veteran cemetery ways of doing things in the US as opposed to Europe. It was enlightening. Seems like some old veteran graves in Europe were ....to put it lightly...desecrated in previous centuries. Old sites of battlefield dead from 150 or more years ago, like Waterloo, were turned into fertilizer in some cases apparently. British war dead were buried in the locations where they fell in subsequent wars and their resting places well taken care of down to today and memorialized and remembered in official cemeteries scattered here and there. Most American bodies, not all, were shipped home to families that requested it. However, it turns out surprising to me, British veterans who succumbed to the natural causes get no burial assistance if they lived past the wars they served in. Veterans of peacetime get no cemetery space, no matter if a lifer SGT. Maj or short term private. The US will bury any veteran who's next of kin asks and plant his body in a military cemetery with actual perpetual care. Of course probably the majority of veterans prefer to meet a civilian interment and not in a military cemetery. Those who die paupers receive honor due for time serving their country at one time or the other no matter how low their lot in life ended. The US considers at least a respectable burial site the right thing, and the least the country owes the veteran.

I was looking at some photos I took in a local cemetery. It is old. There is a Civil War veteran plot that memorializes Civil War southern soldiers including oddly enough the grave of a member of the CSS Alabama privateer that was sunk off of the coast of Cherbourg in France. Now days the Confederate battle flag is gone thanks to wokeness. How the body was recovered from France and brought to the US is a story in itself. I do not know the story. The biggest thing about it to me is that the sailor was probably British and recruited in England. The CSS Alabama never touched the shores of the US. At the same cemetery is a US official military cemetery with bodies of soldiers and sailors from a century and a half or so ago down to dates at least the late 50's and probably later. It is full now and a new US cemetery is located about 25 miles away. Any former military member can be buried in the new cemetery. No need of being in a war. The government provided the space and the headstone and..... perpetual care is assured.

"The Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) National Cemetery Administration maintains 155 national cemeteries
in 42 states and Puerto Rico."
That's way more than I thought there were. I learned some about them when we put my wife's parent's ashes in a wall at the Tahoma one.
And yes, your spouse can be put in with you. And each veteran's family receives a large flag, I think 5'x8' but not sure.
And furnish a memorial service in a covered area with a chaplain and riflemen and flag folders. And there is no charge for any of this.
Having attended a service for both a lifer Major and a NG Spec5, there was no difference.
And every cemetery is beautiful, at least the ones I have been to in WA, CA, and HI.
So far I have been totally impressed with how the VA National Cemeteries treat deceased veterans.
But I will be buried next to my wife and parents.

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The Commonwealth war graves commission - CWGC - are responsible for the management and support of 23,000 locations, in more than 150 countries and territories.
This is a link to their history. https://www.cwgc.org/who-we-are/our-history/

I can also highly recommend this book which tells the story of it's creation.

The thought occurs to me now why British Soldiers are buried all over the place. When you had an empire, instead of a county, one place in the world was home as much as another empirically speaking. British mothers apparently didn't necessarily want junior buried in the local village cemetery back where he came from. In fact it was probably a good thing and helped cement the empire together. It was like a dog peeing on a tree to mark his territory so all other dogs would know. Home to empires isn't where they hang their hats but where they bury their corpses. To this day I wonder if people in England are more likely to think of themselves as being in the United Kingdom rather than English and the same for the Scottish or Welch. Of course the Irish are excepted. We know how the Catholic Irish feel about it.

For the last hundred years the US has spent money and blood playing king of the world without acquiring property. We felt good saving the rest of the world.... at least the last half dozen Presidents or so did....from tyrants and various isms and ists. However, leaving dead bodies behind in foreign soil was and is a non starter proposition for a great majority of Americans. We are still searching for and finding bodies from long past wars and bringing them back for burial in the US or sorting them out on our own soil from Civil War battle fields and replanting remains in a orderly manner in appropriate burial locations.

Unlike the British Empire we discovered we didn't need to actually possess any more Puerto Rico's or occupy Philippine islands long ago. Our leaders find it more appealing to be able to tell other countries what to do and decide and dictate who the enemies are and who the friends are and line other countries up according to friend and foe. Of course ruling the world plays hell with the national debt. it's more important to crank out more war material than to replace old roads and bridges. Just patch up the potholes and add another brace to the bridge and keep the expensive smart weapons coming.