07.01.08
A Meditation on Antietam, 9/11, and Healing...
God bless America...Anthony Souza

Several years ago, after 9/11, Roseanne and I took a road trip over the July
4th weekend to visit a cornfield in Western Maryland. No ordinary cornfield,
but a very special one-within the National Park Service's Antietam
Battlefield.

The Park of gently rolling hills and fields of corn, located outside
Sharpsburg, was established in 1890 to preserve the place where thousands
died in the bloodiest single-day battle in American history. It was there,
on September 17, 1862, that the Union Army of the Potomac attacked General
Robert E. Lee's Confederate forces as they invaded the North. On that
fateful day, over 23,000 soldiers were killed or wounded-more than the
deaths of all Americans in the entire Revolutionary War, the War of 1812,
our war with Mexico, and the Spanish-American War combined. Antietam's
losses marked a turning point in the war, halting Lee's invasion and,
according to Park Service historians, sealed the fate of the Confederacy.

Even if one is rusty on American Civil War facts and statistics, visiting
Antietam evokes images, sensations, and-for some-deep emotions that can be
profound and lingering. Spanning the bucolic farmland below the Park's
modern visitor's center, planted in tall corn as it was in 1862, meandering
through the high ground of Dunker Church or walking along the "Sunken Road"
where bodies of the dead and wounded in blue and gray had lain three deep,
human senses are tuned to catch the faintest drift of battle sounds.

Maybe it's the cry of men's voices-perhaps the lingering battle cry of the
69th Regiment of New York, The Irish Brigade, shouting 'faugh-a-balaugh,
faugh-a-balaugh.' Or the smell of smoke-is it from a nearby farmhouse, or
from the more than 500 cannons that once perched on high ground? Or a tiny
spot of red moving haltingly in the distance-is it a cardinal, or Clara
Barton in her bonnet and red bow, tending to the wounded and dying, as she
did well into that terrible night until she herself collapsed from lack of
sleep and typhoid fever?

To many Americans, this battleground symbolizes the terrible cost of human
life and suffering of our Civil War and of all wars and conflicts.

Healing Field 9/11 Memorial

Which brings me to the reason for our Antietam visit: A compelling article
caught Roseanne's attention in late June of that year, announcing a "Healing
Field(tm) 9/11 Memorial" to be created at Antietam Battlefield over the 4th
of July weekend. The project called for placing over 3000 American flags
along a grid of rows within the growing rows of corn. Each flag was to
commemorate the victims and heroes killed in the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001. The project mobilized and unified the local community as
many volunteers turned out to plant the flags for the three-day national
holiday.

According to national Healing Field(tm) founder Paul Swenson, "I was trying
to imagine how big a number 3031 [the total killed that day as seen on CNN's
Web page] was and decided it would be appropriate to put up 3031 US flags."

"I want the sensation to be that of walking through a cornfield of flags so
an individual literally gets lost in the flags and feels the enormity of
that number."

The flags at Antietam indeed were planted like rows of corn in a vast open
field. Their tall 'stalks' of red, white and blue stood almost eight feet
high, surrounded by green and golden meadows and hills of tall corn that
once provided cover for soldiers, a bed for the dying, and cornhusks to
dress soldiers' wounds. The setting was poignant. And fitting.

Union General Hooker, marching toward the site known today as Miller's
Cornfield, his cannon trained on the corn, had reported in a note to General
McClellan, "In the time I am writing, every stalk of corn in the northern
and greater part of the field was cut as closely as could have been done
with a knife, and the slain lay in rows precisely as they had stood in their
ranks a few moments before."

Antietam exists as a painful reminder of a terrible battle on a September
day, 146 years ago. It helps us appreciate the cost of a devastating Civil
War that claimed more American lives than were lost in both World Wars and
subsequent conflicts in Korea, Viet Nam, and the Middle East.

The national site also serves as an important instrument of healing,
reminding us that our young nation not only survived and rebuilt, but moved
on to become a stronger Union.

So too, the Healing Field stood as an important reminder of another loss,
139 years later, and as an equally important instrument of healing.

Meaningful ceremony helps many of us come to grips with the tragic, the
inexplicable, or the unexpected. As Roseanne and I walked in silent ritual
among the rows and rows of flags, stopping to read the names affixed to many
of them, we honored the men, women and children who died on another
September morning-victims of another kind of 'war'.

Today, four years later, we pause to honor our men and women in uniform,
stationed around the world, whose service to our Nation protects and
preserves the freedoms we enjoy. Many have paid the ultimate price, and many
others continue to sacrifice daily to ensure "life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness" are more than words on paper.

To these families who sacrifice for us and to the many among them who pick
up the shattered pieces of their lives, trusting God and time to sow the
seeds of healing, we extend our sincere gratitude and prayers this July 4th,
2008. We will never forget your service and sacrifice for our freedom.