Anniversary For A Neighbor

An evening stroll in the cemetery last week brought this timely acquaintance:

Robert L. MacDonald
Cpl. 502 Parachute Infantry
April 11, 1915
June 10, 1944

Twenty-four-hour access to hot and cold running information enabled me to find out what Cpl. MacDonald' s unit was doing on the day of his death.

Four days after D-Day, the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, a unit of the 101st Airborne Division, was ordered to capture the crossroads town of Carentan, essential to provide a link between the Omaha and Utah landing beaches.

The approach to Carentan traversed an exposed causeway, with marshes on either side. At the head of the causeway, German troops had entrenched themselves in a farmhouse. Snipers hid in the marshes and orchards flanking the approach, and at least one of the Wehrmacht's feared 88mm guns was poised to devastate the approaching Americans.

According to The 101st Airborne During WWII:

The 3d Battalion, 502d PIR, led the... drive along the causeway. Progress, however, was extremely slow. The men of the 502d advanced along the causeway with no cover, facing steady fire as they moved forward. The battalion inched along until it reached the bridge on the Madeleine River and ran into a strong enemy position concentrated in an old farmhouse and the adjoining hedgerows.

Lt. Col. Robert G. Cole, the battalion commander, called for artillery fire on the position, but it did no good. Pinned down, he ordered a charge with fixed bayonets. Colonel Cole leapt up to lead the charge, but not all his men had gotten the word. The executive officer prodded the men along, and Cole continued with the soldiers that had followed. The Germans withdrew from the farmhouse, and the charging soldiers cleared the hedgerow positions. Cole was awarded the Medal of Honor for his efforts that day. Unfortunately, he was killed in a later division operation before receiving his medal.

Further, from Wikipedia:

Nightfall ended the advance but not the casualties, when an attack at 23:30 by two low-flying German Ju 87 Stukas strafing the causeway knocked "Item" Company completely out of the battle.

The severe casualties suffered by the 3rd/502d PIR, estimated at 67% of the original force, resulted in the nickname "Purple Heart Lane" applied to that portion of the Carentan-Sainte-Mère-Église highway.

And somewhere in all this, 65 years ago today, a young man from Washburn, Wisconsin, gave his life.

Gone Home: a brief review

Gone Home: Southern Folk Gravestone Art is a good book, but a deceptively titled one. The word "southern" suggests it's going to provide examples from across the southern United States; in reality it focuses exclusively on cemeteries in the state of Alabama.

Similarly, the phrase "gravestone art" implies the authors are going to focus on the decorative elements of funerary art: statuary, carvings, headstone shapes and styles, and so on. Instead, the authors' passion lies in epitaphs. The authors do discuss carving, but the focus seems to be more on the development of the lettering used in epitaphs rather than on the decorative elements of a marker such as floral motifs and Christian symbolism. There is also an interesting discussion of folklore and memorialization, and the evolution of markers and inscriptions over time.

Nonetheless, while the book is a useful one for anyone interested in gravestones and the history of memorialization, a reader looking for a book that focuses on gravestone art overall rather than the content of the inscriptions would be doomed to disappointment. Similarly, anyone hoping for a book that provides a regional context should look elsewhere. This is a good book on a specific subject area, and as such as fairly limited in its content.

A Slight But Relevant Digression

An article in yesterday's New York Times provides one more illustration of a shift in American culture:

The Funeral: Your Last Chance to Be a Big Spender

Mr. Firnstein also says he is fielding more calls from families interested in natural burials. Adherents of the movement wrap bodies in simple shrouds or in biodegradable coffins and bury them in woodland cemeteries.

Such simple burials are traditional in many faiths, and were long the standard practice in the United States until the Civil War, when the development of modern embalming and the expansion of the train system altered the landscape of death and gave rise to the modern mortuary practice.

Read that last sentence again: "...the expansion of the train system altered the landscape..."

A generation ago, the reporter almost certainly would have written, "the expansion of the railroad network."

This is not a matter of enthusiast nit-picking; rather I submit that it is further evidence of the retreat of the railroads from their once-central position in American life. People just don't think much about railroads anymore; consequently, standardized terms of discourse that were once familiar to all have been forgotten and reporters grab for new ones on the fly.

Back to topic: my head exploded when I read this part about the trend to simpler and cheaper funerals:

“Back in the day, families might spend $10,000, $12,000 on a solid African mahogany casket, have an all-out wake and such,” (funeral director Jerry Sullivan) says. “Those days are over.”

Today, many funeral directors offer hardwood or metal rental coffins for a short period before cremation, Mr. Sullivan says. He charges roughly $1,000 to rent a hardwood casket for a daylong viewing; a body is placed in a combustible container of cardboard or soft wood, and inserted into the rental coffin lined with fabric.

A thousand bucks to rent a wooden box for one day? You could rent a house for a month for less than that around here.

Durability?

This is a wonderful marker, but I'm wondering what it's going to look like in 100 years. The marker is in the Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia.

Union Church Cemetery, Pleasant Hill, Mississippi

The Union Church Cemetery near Pleasant Hill, Mississippi, has a nice assortment of metal markers.

Photos were taken March 23 by Ray Mannikko. Ray estimates the obelisk below was at least 8 feet tall.

The lamb below is the first I've seen in zinc. The grave also includes a metal footstone.

Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Part II: Statuary

Bonaventure Cemetery has some lovely examples of funerary art, including these statues.

A slightly damaged angel:

One of the better known monuments in the cemetery:

Two examples of bas relief:

The cemetery also has an impressive number of bronzes. I'll include a few in a future post.

Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Part I: Gothics

Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia, is the first cemetery I've ever wandered into that was actually crawling with tourists. The ripple effect of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil apparently lingers on because there were a lot of people wandering around with cameras and guidebooks, all apparently focused on finding Johnny Mercer's grave while oblivious to the wonderful funerary art elsewhere in the cemetery.

I did not, however, go looking for anything mentioned in the book, and have no clue just where Mr. Mercer got planted. I just kind of wandered around, admiring the Gothic markers and other statuary. I'm not normally a big fan of Gothic, but Bonaventure has some truly nice pieces.

The bed grave above is unfortunately damaged. You can tell that at one time there was a piece of ornamentation inside the three-sided headstone, probably a cross, but it's gone now. There's also damage to the back of the marker.

The majority of the grave markers at Bonaventure, however, are in remarkably good condition. I was expecting to see a fair amount of sugaring, but maybe the wind isn't from the right direction for the acid rain from the pulp mills and other Savannah industries to hit the marble. The damage that was visible tended to be pieces broken off, e.g., angels' fingers, rather than weathering.

Bonaventure Cemetery was originally a private cemetery located on a plantation near Savannah operated under the name of Evergreen Cemetery. The City of Savannah purchased the cemetery in 1907, and changed the name to Bonaventure.

Photos were taken with a 35 mm camera on actual film.