Battles over Arlington Cemetery unseemly and sad

Battles over Arlington Cemetery unseemly and sad

Capital Eye by Randi Bjornstad

Last month, Rep. Christopher Smith of New Jersey introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that he calls the “Reservists Burial Equity Act.”

Simply put, H.R. 3659 would allow people who served in the military reserves for 20 years but who died before they reached the age of 60 to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

It also would permit reservists who died in the line of duty or during training to be buried there on the same basis as those in the regular Armed Forces.

This doesn’t seem like a lot to ask, but up to now, burials of these reserve veterans has not been allowed at the most hallowed of national cemeteries.

As Smith explained when he introduced his bill, “Current Army rules provide in-ground burial at Arlington National Cemetery to veterans who died on active duty, received one of the military services’ highest awards for gallantry, were held as a prisoner of war or retired from active duty military service.”

In addition, he said, veterans who do not meet the eligibility criteria but who served “in a high federal office” also may be buried there.

The issue arose most prominently in recent years when Charles Burlingame III, the pilot of the American Airlines plane that terrorists crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, initially could not be buried at Arlington. Although he had retired from the U.S. Naval Reserves, Burlingame was only 51 years old, making him ineligible for the honor.

“It is wholly inequitable that a reservist who serves our nation for a minimum of 20 years is ineligible for in-ground burial at Arlington National Cemetery because he or she had the misfortune to die prior to age 60,” Smith said.

Likewise, he said, it shouldn’t matter a bit whether a reservist died during training or not, “because in today’s military, there’s often no practical difference” between the military experience of a reservist and a career military person.

In recent years–most notably in Iraq and Afghanistan–reservists have been called upon to participate in active duty for extended periods of time, performing the same dangerous duties as those in “regular” service and putting their civilian lives, and those of their families, on hold, Smith said.

This doesn’t seem like an issue that should generate any controversy at all, yet although it passed the House in the last session, it didn’t make it through the full Congress to become law.

Obviously, not everyone who has served in the U.S. military can be buried at Arlington–it’s much too small. For that reason, strict rules have been developed through the years to control the number of in-ground interments there.

That’s where the restrictions on reservists comes into play, limiting burial rights to those who have served long enough to collect retirement pay–20 years–and who served a period of active duty beyond mere training exercises and survived to age 60.

The requirements don’t stop there. Those who earned the nation’s highest military decorations may be buried at Arlington, as well as those who received honorable discharges before Oct. 1, 1949, who qualified for a 30 percent disability.

All current and former presidents of the United States also may be buried at Arlington, regardless of military service.

A year ago, the U.S. Interior and Army departments released an additional 26 acres of land to make room for more graves and a new columbarium at Arlington, partly in response to concerns that the deaths of World War II veterans would fill the existing cemetery to capacity sometime in 2005, according to the American Forces Press Service.

About 6,000 burials take place at Arlington each year, about one-third of those in new graves, the press service says. The remainder include husbands and wives interred in existing graves, or ashes placed in the columbarium.

More than 260,000 people have been buried at Arlington National Cemetery, including veterans from the Revolutionary War through the Persian Gulf War and Somalia, according to the Military District of Washington. An average of 20 interments and inurnments occur every day at the cemetery.

Even so, Arlington doesn’t rank as the largest of the 130 national cemeteries throughout the country. Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island, N.Y., carries out 7,000 burials each year. The necessity for national cemeteries to honor young men and women who have given their lives for this country should be a cause of concern for everyone. But the type of military service in which they gave, in the words or Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, “the last full measure of devotion,” should not determine where their earthly remains should rest.