Wreaths Across America honors our fallen veterans and teaches children the value of freedom byArlington Cemetery.Interestingly enough, so many people had volunteered that the wreaths were already on the graves when we arrived.Says a great deal about how great the American people are.The weather was miserable. Heavy rains the entire time. Thick pea-soup fog. Boot sucking mud. Non-stop rplacing Christmas wreaths on veteran graves on December 15th each year.This year, my wife volunteered us to help at Yet, people were wonderful. No one complained. Everyone was kind and respectful.
We parked on the North side of the Pentagon with thousands of others and walked to the front gates of Arlington Cemetery.Everyone was soaked. Everyone.
The security was buttoned down. As I had a VA Medical card I was able to bypass the long line waiting to go through the security tent at the entrance.When we got through the front gate, we noticed all the grave sites already had Christmas wreaths.
We headed toward Section 8 where my uncles are buried and noticed that all the graves had Christmas wreaths as well.Remarkable.
As all the hard work had been done by good Americans before we got there at 9:30 a.m. when we were walking along all the graves had wreaths.
So, we headed to my Uncle Ray Curley's grave site as my wife Robin had never been to it.
I wish I could have visited the grave site of my Uncle Frank Curley, the oldest of my father's six brothers to serve, but his B-24 was shot down on February 10, 1945 off HaHa Jima.
Like many military families, Frank's example and untimely death led to the brothers who followed him to serve in the military.
Two of the six are buried at Arlington Cemetery.It is an honor to visit their graves. I would have loved to put a wreath on it. But I am eternally, grateful to whoever it was who went before me and put a Christmas wreath on their graves for me.
"We didn't know them all but we owe them all" was written on the side of the one of the sponsors trucks. I almost broke down and cried when I read that because the truth is so evident in a world where truth is so continuously under assault.
My Uncle Frank died in a watery grave in the South Pacific. As in so much death in war, it never had to happen. An incompetent, vain, Lieutenant Colonel gave horrible orders...but Frank and his crew followed them, to their death. I know this from the letter of the pilot of the B-24 behind him and the sole survivor of their B-24 being split in half by Imperial Japanese ack-ack.It took me many years (35+)of research to find out the truth of his final mission.
But I found it. And I recorded it because he was not able to do so.
As happens to so many MIA's, I did not want Lt. Frank Curley to disappear from history. He and tens of thousands of MIA's deserve to be remembered, to have their story told, to have their sacrifices remembered, their contribution to the American reality set in stone.
(My wife noticed immediately that Ray's wife Lorraine was engraved on the back of his tomb stone. "He was a good man, an Air Force man!" I remember her saying over and over at his funeral. Ray was very humble, very quiet, great intel guy. Even at my Dad's funeral when I asked him what he did in Vietnam, he expertly deflected the question with: "How about those Phillies?!" More information on Ray Curley here.)Although Lt. Frank Curley has no grave stone at Arlington, he has his life recorded as best I could recreated it from documents (Missing in Action Report, DD-214, letter from the pilot of the plane behind his that saw his B-24 hit and broken in half, reports from survivors).
My Uncle Billy Curley's grave site (Section 8, Grave 260-LH) is on a steep hill below two large oaks with a straight view of the U.S. Air Force.
The whole reason I wrote that blog post for over 35 years was to use Frank's story as an example for others who, though they have no ideas of what happened to their family member who was an MIA, might find resources on that blog post to help them in their search.
Once I thought I had it rough trying to trace Frank's MIA status and final mission.
Then I read "American Trophies How US POWs were Surrendered to North Korea, China and Russ by Washington's Cynical Attitude" by Mark Saulter and John Zemmerlee. Read it and weep.
Our pilots, technicians, etc. were valuable to the North Koreans, Chinese, and Russians at the time. All three communist nations fought to get as many as they could to advance their ruthless communist war machine.My wife had never seen my Uncle John Curley's (USAF) grave site (64 6719), or that of my uncle Ray Curley, and we were able to visit both.
We also visited the grave site of Lieutenant Commander Ronald J. Vauk, United States Navy, and CW 4 William R. Ruth, U.S. Army, both from my home town of Mt. Airy, MD who were killed in the Pentagon by Islamic jihadi's on September 11th, 2001. This is part of the Islamic jihadi 1400-year war chronicled by Raymond Ibrahim in the book Sword and Scimitaremorial. There are multiple ways to find a grave site at Arlington Cemetery.
Here are a few.
Arlington National Cemetery App Search: ANC Explorer
Arlington National Cemetery Web Search: ANC Web Search
Also, there is a wider grave site search engine that includes Arlington Cemetery: National Cemetery Administration.
