Ft. Lewis Cemetery walk

Yesterday (Jan 8, 2009), I found myself wandering through the Ft. Lewis Cemetery on a lunch break trying to explore the areas on Ft. Lewis. The setting and the cemetery was like that from a perfectly scripted movie ready to film a solemn funeral. The clouds were low, the ground was wet, the rain was falling softly, the trees standing firm with their roots penetrating the earth protecting the graves from any danger.

As I exited my Jeep to walk up to the cemetery I head a large caliber high powered weapon pierce the silent air. My instant reaction was to flinch at the unexpected sound. I realized there was a firing range about 300 meters away where Soldiers where training on their weapons for familiarization and skilled marksmen. During my walk-through looking at all the dates on the gravestones, and listening to the Soldiers on the firing range, a complex thought came to mind in that atmosphere. "Is not the purpose of training with a weapon to ultimately make one more of these gravestones?"Even I myself had spent hundreds of hours at a firing range hoping to become an expert shot if the need ever arouse. But I never thought about how every shot taken when in combat at an opposing force, meant one could possibly create another spot for a grave somewhere in the world.

Later I noticed another fact that many of the dates in those gravestones indicated the burial sites contained so many children and infants. So many of these kids where two years old, three years and they died, and some were only two or one day old. I could not help of thinking of my own two year old daughter and the anguish I would feel if she was taken from me. So many lives, so much death, only God himself knows the reason for it all.