Walter Napier III, Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth deputy command historian, shared some of his research on the National Cemetery Administration, American Battle Monuments Commission and the Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery during his Friends of the Frontier Army Museum History Talk, “To the Fallen: Veteran Commemoration, Memorials and the Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery,” Sept. 20 at the Frontier Army Museum.
Napier, who as an active-duty soldier served three combat tours to Iraq and Afghanistan, said his interest in national cemeteries was sparked while he was working for the Veterans Legacy Program and Veterans History Project in graduate school.
Arlington National Cemetery
Napier gave an overview and history of Arlington National Cemetery, the well-known 639-acre cemetery in Virginia that has more than 400,000 burials to date and adds about 40 new burials every week.
“(George Washington Parke) Custis was the adopted grandson of George Washington, and the (original) idea was that the Arlington estate would become a living monument, kind of like a national park situation, to commemorate George Washington and his life,” Napier said.
The estate passed to Custis’ daughter, Mary, who married Robert E. Lee, the Confederate Civil War general, and the property was seized by the military soon after the start of the Civil War.
“A few years later, what essentially ends up happening is that the casualties are getting too great,” Napier said of the Civil War. “We can look at the American Revolution, War of 1812, the Indian Wars — these wars’ casualties were relatively light. When you go to the Civil War, we (had) yet to have a war that had as many casualties as the Civil War. The amount of boys coming home that needed burial grew at a massive rate.”
Napier said available cemeteries filled up quickly, and that just one battle could result in as many soldiers needing burial as a cemetery had had in the previous 80 years, which led to the Arlington estate being designated as a cemetery.
The land seizure was deemed illegal in 1880, but Lee’s son sold the land back to the United States, as it was already being used as a military cemetery.
American Battle Monuments Commission
American Battle Monuments Commission, established in 1923, oversees 26 military cemeteries and 28 federal memorials in Belgium, Cuba, France, Gibraltar, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Northern Mariana Islands, Mexico, Morocco, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Tunisia and the United Kingdom, as well as four memorials within the United States, to commemorate the service and sacrifice of American service members killed in World War I and World War II.
Napier said ABMC’s work is not just about commemorating American service, but building alliances with other countries.
“World War I kind of changed how wars are commemorated,” Napier said. “War memorials are nothing new — but this (war) was a really big one, it affected the whole world. … Great memorials became the standard. If you go to France, in almost every single town, whether it is Paris with millions of people or it’s a small town on the edge of Lorraine, you are still going to have a World War I monument.”
He said AMBC was set up to commemorate the United States’ place on the world stage during the first world war.
“One of the things that is beautiful about the AMBC is that these are live battlefields, so they continue to search for casualties, they continue to use updated methods and try to identify remains so that the men on the tablets (of missing service members) … can actually have a place to rest.”
National Cemetery Administration
Initially 14 national cemeteries were established by Congress in 1862, and the National Cemetery System was further defined five years later as needs were better realized.
“One of the laws in 1867 was that you will have a fence or a wall around the property. Obviously, you just fought a Civil War, you’ve got a lot of tension between the North and the South, so you don’t want these graves vandalized, you want them honored, so either a brick or steel wall was a requirement.”
The current National Cemetery Administration was created in 1973 to care for the national cemeteries, which include 155 U.S. Veterans Affairs cemeteries and 121 VA-granted (town versus VA initiative to establish) cemeteries.
Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery
Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery was one of the original 14 national cemeteries, and at the time in 1862 was one of the largest with six acres. FLNC currently has about 22,000 burials and is about 36 acres.
Fort Leavenworth originally had two burial sites, one for enlisted soldiers and one for officers; those sites were consolidated in 1858.
Napier said restrictions have become stricter for new interments, especially in nearly full locations like Fort Leavenworth, and that other locations, like the Leavenworth National Cemetery, have more available space.
“Pretty much any honorably discharged veteran can be buried in a national cemetery,” he said. “If you’re retired, if you have valorous awards, if you’re disabled, you might not have to pay for anything or you might have greater services applied to you, all that might depend, but for the most part, if you’re an honorably discharged veteran, you can be buried there.”
Napier said that when post founder Col. Henry Leavenworth died in 1834, he was buried in New York when the area was still considered the Frontier, but as Fort Leavenworth established itself as an important permanent post, the decision was made, with permission from his family, for Leavenworth to be reinterred at the Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery in 1902. His grave in the FLNC is marked by a 12-foot granite column.
The oldest grave in the Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery is from 1844 for a civilian, and the oldest military grave is from 1846.
Napier highlighted a few “notables” buried in the FLNC, including Capt. Thomas Custer, the two-time Medal of Honor recipient who died at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, pointing out that Custer’s headstone has the gold inlay indicative of a Medal of Honor recipient’s headstone whereas most headstones have black inlay, and Col. (Brevet Gen.) Edward Hatch, who was commander of the 9th U.S. Cavalry Regiment from 1866-1889.
“The Civil War changes a lot of how we consider things,” Napier said, noting that at the beginning of the war, President Abraham Lincoln was concerned with preserving the Union, not abolishing slavery, but as the war progressed, the concept of slavery became central. Black soldiers, originally not allowed to fight, were included in the draft, Napier said, with the thought of the white population being, “‘If a black soldier can fight, then I don’t have to.’”
“Those black soldiers went out and bathed themselves in glory,” he said, referencing the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment that was depicted in the movie “Glory.”
“After the war, you can’t really tell the guys who charged Fort Wagner (that they) can’t fight, that’s not worthy of an option, so we got the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendment that came in after and during the Civil War, and one of the things that came through was ‘We will have permanent regiments of black soldiers.’ And those four regiments — the 24th and 25th Infantry and the 9th and 10th Cavalry — became known as the Buffalo Soldiers.”
U.S. Disciplinary Barracks Cemetery
Lesser known, the USDB Cemetery, was established after the quartermaster in 1883 noticed that a prisoner was buried next to an honorable soldier in the Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery.
“Most cemeteries are facing east-west, and that comes from the Christian religion and other religions where the east is supposed to represent a new day, a new life, a new rising. The rumor was that the (USDB Cemetery), since it was ‘dishonorable,’ was facing north and south. I went out there and checked it, and it’s actually true.”
Napier said that the USDB Cemetery contains about 240 burials of civilian and military prisoners who died during confinement, including the graves of 14 executed German prisoners of war. He said the last burial was in 1957 and that although the cemetery is run by the Department of the Army, it is not open for new burials.
“Veteran commemoration is one of those things we can’t even really let it go,” Napier said. “If you’ve ever walked those hills of those (service members) buried in Arlington, it really gives you a feel of what this cost, this American experiment is hard to keep going, and that sacrifice is important.”
Visit https://www.facebook.com/FrontierArmyMuseum/videos/304651838851998 to view Napier’s full FFAM History Talk.
Upcoming FFAM History Talks:
• Oct. 18: Speaker Neil Bass, Fort Leavenworth Natural Resources specialist, topic TBD.
• March 21: Speaker Marla Matkin, author/ teacher/presenter, “Women of the Santa Fe Trail”
• March 20: Speaker Gary Hyder, attorney, Fort Leavenworth Office of the Staff Judge Advocate, “Nez Perce”
FFAM History Talks are at 5:30 p.m. at the Frontier Army Museum. Check the museum’s Facebook page for updates.
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