'Hallowed Ground': A Final Resting Place At Arlington
A bugler plays taps during burial services at Arlington National Cemetery in September 2009. Kevin Wolf/AP hide caption
A bugler plays taps during burial services at Arlington National Cemetery in September 2009.
Kevin Wolf/APThousands of people will visit Arlington National Cemetery on Veteran's Day — just a snapshot of the four million visitors who pass through America's revered burial ground each year. Author Robert M. Poole discusses his new book, On Hallowed Ground, which traces the history of the nation's most celebrated military cemetery.
"For many visitors," Poole writes, "a pilgrimage to Arlington is a devotional act — to seek out a buried relative, to pay respects to a treasured friend, to leave a promised beer or cigarette at the tomb of an Army buddy, to brush off a wife's grave and bring her up to date on the latest headlines. ... Few images linger in the national imagination as vividly as this hallowed ground, with its ghostly white tombstones, its deep green turf, its gnarled trees alive with songbirds and cicadas."
