America’s last surviving World War I veteran died in
2011. Frank Buckles was 110 years old, and he devoted his last years to pushing
for a national World War I memorial on the National Mall in Washington.
There still isn’t one.
If all goes as hoped, though, the National World War
One memorial will open in 2018, the 100th anniversary of the
armistice that ended the “war to end all wars.” But it won’t be on the Mall.
After a design competition to be announced any day,
the World War One Centennial Commission hopes to transform Pershing Park, a
block from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, where today a statue of Gen.
John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, leader of the American Expeditionary Forces in
the war, commands a dismal plaza that has fallen into disrepair.
Buckles had dreamed of repurposing as a national
monument the District of Columbia’s elegant, open-air memorial to the city’s 499
World War I dead, but city officials balked. An effort
to create a memorial to doughboys in Constitution Gardens on the Mall, costing
up to $10 million, also collapsed.
And now there’s the problem of money. When Congress approved
the Pershing Park site last December, it decreed: “No federal funds may be
obligated or expended” for the World War I memorial.
It took only 60
years to build the World War II Memorial in Washington. The saga of the World
War I memorial shows how long and winding the road can be to commemorate our
war heroes, and that has implications for memorializing fighters in the War on
Global Terror.
We do have state, local and online memorials that honor
troops who have died in Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom and
related conflicts. Nearly 6,900 American men and women have died in combat since
2001.
But unlike previous wars, this one may not end when all
the troops eventually come home from Afghanistan as most have from Iraq, not if
the cancer of extremism continues to spread in the region.
That matters because under the Commemorative Works
Act of 1986, which governs new memorials in Washington, a new war memorial
cannot be built until at least 10 years after “the officially designated end”
of a war.
Then there’s the question of where to put such a
memorial. The National Mall is officially full. Congress in 2003 designated a
“Reserve” area where no new memorials can be built. The swath of prime real
estate from the U.S. Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and from the White House
to the Jefferson Memorial is a “substantially completed work of civic art,”
Congress said. Some memorials were grandfathered
in and Congress made exceptions for others, but new commemorative works are
prohibited.
With budgets tight and the congressional Republican
majority eager to hold down spending, the prospect of significant federal funds
for a memorial to the War on Terror appears slim.
Fortunately, the story of the Iraq and Afghanistan
veterans’ experience won’t be completely missing from the nation’s capital.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which built The Wall, plans an underground
Education Center at the Wall that not only will put faces with the 58,000 names
listed but also will include photos of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
“Every hour on the hour, we’re going to show photos
of Iraq and Afghanistan” veterans, Jan Scruggs, founder of the fund, told DOD
News last month.
“This will have enormous psychological importance to
the people who served in these wars. Eventually they’ll get their own monument,
I suspect… But this will be a place that will be a very big deal to them,” said
Scruggs, who hopes to start construction in 2018 and open the education center
in 2020.
But, again, there’s a question of money. Scruggs
said the center needs to raise $92 million more.
While space at the education center is not a permanent way to commemorate
the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s a decent start while we consider
what a fitting monument to our latest combat veterans should be.
Let’s hope we get together as a country and build a national tribute
before this generation of vets fades away.
©2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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