"Hallowed Ground"

There aren’t too many of us left who remember that war. Cemeteries filled with dead men from across an ocean litter the ancestral land of my people, and most of the youth don’t know enough to remember what they’re for, or why those cemeteries have been allowed to stand so long with infidels’ crosses over the graves, carved of white limestone and marble. Those kids see the symbology of Christ as just that, a symbol of the enemy to be demolished.

The Colonel kept order, at least. He didn’t really like those cemeteries either, though he’d had the education to know their significance, he preserved their sanctity out of either fear of the great powers that had erected those gravestones or out of archaic respect for the fallen dead of so many years past. It doesn’t matter anymore, of course. I was already well into my life when he was born, I was already old when “Colonel” became synonymous with “King”, and I have outlived him in the end. Those who would replace the Colonel are not like him - they are barely above kids themselves. I should have known things would come to the point where they could not bear the sight of those stone crosses any longer.

It was only a few weeks after word was spread of the Colonel’s death when it finally happened. I made my way slowly to the cemetery just outside of town, just as I had for more years than most men were lucky to live. Each time, it seemed, my steps were a little shakier. My dear wife used to come with me, but she’s been gone four years now, and our children have long since left this poor little town to make their lives in the big city not far from here, on the coast. There’s no-one to help me make the trip, but I have to make it. It’s not something most people understand, and since my dear wife went to meet God, I have walked the third of a mile up to the cemetery alone.

I saw that the gate was smashed in when I rounded the last bend, and though it left me gasping for breath I hurried the last few hundred paces, and nearly died of horror when I looked in on the ruins inside the walls. The graves were desecrated, and despite my age I wanted for that moment to take up a blade or a rifle and kill every one of the culprits. Stone crosses lay smashed, and tire tracks showed the culprit - a small truck, like those so famously used by the men who killed the Colonel, had been rammed into some of the stones, and used to pull others down. Some showed signs of being smashed with hammers, others bore the marks of pickaxes. Many sported the bright splotches I knew were caused by gunfire. Only one cross-shaped marker stood defiant, un-toppled.

It was near the front, just to the left of the gate, and the nameplate, despite looking to have absorbed a full clip from an assault rifle, still legibly read “JAMES H. WOLTON”. The stone cross was scored with dozens of impact marks, including long horizontal ones that bore a distinct resemblance to the front profile of a truck bumper. But despite all that, the marker still stood, battered but defiant, where all of its compatriots had fallen. I staggered to it, and knelt down amidst the shattered pieces of rock, my knees resting only feet above the bones of the greatest man I have ever had the honor to meet.

Private Jim Wolton was an American. I know we all hate the Americans now and shout “death to America” at all the right times to please those who know better, but there was a time when some of us and some of them shared a battlefield, not as enemies, but as allies.

“Jim, I am sorry.” I whispered, in the same broken English he’d taught me all those years ago. “They’ve broken all your crosses. They don’t remember. They didn’t - ”

“They didn’t know what they did.” Jim seemed to say. Many times, when I came to his grave, I could almost see him sitting there, in dusty, worn tan fatigues and with a steel bowl helmet, leaning on the grave marker. I remembered his voice - it twanged oddly, even in English, and more so when he had spoken Arabic. “You let them forget, Zudi.”

I swallowed against a lump in my old throat. “No, Jim. I told the stories. You must believe me. I told three generations of young children what we did here. What we lost, and what we gained in the end.”

My mind’s eye view of my old comrade in arms chuckled drily. “But they did not hear, Zudi. You didn’t make the hear.” The vision tilted its head up to the noontime sun, which reflected off his sunburned, smooth cheeks. It seemed not that he was pronouncing a judgement, only stating the facts, facts that no longer could harm him any more.

A tear rolled from my eye and lost itself in my tangled gray beard. “I’m sorry, Jim. Forgive me.”

The vision did not reply at first, but I sensed that Jim would have forgiven me. He was never the sort to hold a grudge - in the months we’d fought together, I’d never seen him angry outside of combat, and then he was always more scared than angry. We all were, I suppose.

“What will they do?” I eventually asked the gravestone, and the vision of Jim sitting against it, meaning the Americans. “Will they come here to seek revenge for this?”

Jim shook his head sadly in my mind, and closed his eyes. “Like the youth here, they have forgotten, my friend. They have let the words at the gate become a lie. Do you remember them, Zudi?”

I nodded shakily. “I do, Jim.” How could I forget? The men who had erected the crosses and the wall had carved the words twice - once in English, then again translated to Arabic.

“We can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground: the brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.” My vision of Jim quoted, in a tone almost like the one I’d heard him use reading from the bible the chaplain often lent him. “Zudi, did they ever tell you where those words came from?”

I nodded. They had, sort of. “A place called... Gettysburg. The bloodiest battle in American history.” I didn’t know where Gettysburg was or when a battle had been fought there, the men who’d carved those words into the plaque by the gate hadn’t said.

“It’s too bad, Zudi. About the gravestones. Without them, how will people remember what we did?”

“I’m sorry, Jim.” I repeated. “I think... Perhaps the world has already forgotten. There aren’t many of us left who were there. I am the last I know of, and when I go to meet God, there will be no more. It will be like our war never happened.”

He looked at me, and offered a thin smile. “Zudi, people may forget. But God remembers.” He stood, and beckoned me to stand as well. Despite knowing that he was not there, that Jim was just an image in my mind, I complied creakily, my old joints protesting. “We cannot be harmed in humanity’s forgetting. Those who would be harmed are the forgetters.” He gestured out over the ruined stones, and I looked in that direction. At first, all I saw was wind eddies stirring what few hardy plants had grown up around the graves and survived the destruction, but as I looked, I saw a ghostly phantom of a man standing before the stump of each stone. Each phantom had an equally pallid rifle slung over his back, the same kind of rifle that we’d used to shoot at the soldiers in charcoal back in nineteen fourty-two, and in the right hand of each, hilt clasped to his breast and point down, was a sword, not curved in the local fashion but three and a half feet of rigidly straight steel with a wide crosspiece. I could not help but gasp at the sight of the ghostly platoon, armed for war but with faces at peace. Though I knew the men interred in the cemetery to be Americans, Australians, British, and French in life, in the ghosts I could find no trace of nationality - I suppose death washed such distinctions away.

“Zudi, you must not lose heart.” Jim insisted. “There is still much to be done.”

I nodded. “Are the armies of heaven preparing for the last war?” I asked, gesturing shakily to the other spirits.

“Zudi, the last war will come when it comes. We are ready, be it tomorrow or twenty more centuries away.” Jim smiled. “There may be many wars and rumors of war before judgement comes. We fought evil in our time, my friend, but evil was not limited to our time. It is almost as eternal as God himself.”

I nodded. “I know evil, Jim. I see it here.” I gestured to the devastated cemetery.

“This was not done by evil people, only by people led astray by evil.” He gestured to the smashed-in gate behind me. “Soon they will be back, you know. They will be back to destroy what’s left, and to scour the words from beside the gate.”

I nodded. “What would you have me do, Jim? I have grown too old to fight.”

He smiled cherubically, an expression that didn’t seem to conflict with his being dressed for war. “You have a weapon more powerful than any sword, any rifle, any bomb, Zudi. You have the story of our war, its lessons.” My vision of Jim seemed to fade, and with him all the other spirits. “The hosts of heaven watch, Zudi. make them proud.”

I sank back to my knees, and waited. The sun wheeled overhead, the day grew hot, and then it grew cool. The shadows of the ruined stones grew long. All this seemed to happen in moments, though I knew that hours were passing I did not feel them slip by. I prayed that my vision of Jim was right, that what I had was enough to save the last gravestone in the graveyard of heroes.

Dusk was already setting in when I heard the crunch of tires on the path, the slamming of rusty pickup truck doors, and the tromp of feet. I stood creakily and turned to face the half-dozen young men entering the place, all armed with construction equipment and guns of various sizes. One had a shovel, and I wondered if he aimed to dig up the bones of the dead.

“Elder Zudi!” The leader exclaimed, surprised to see me. “What are you doing in this place?”

I smiled, gesturing back at the stone marked with my friend’s name. ”Visiting an old friend from an old war.”

The leader scoffed. “An infidel’s grave.” The others nodded. I was only slightly offended at how little respect they seemed to have for me, but I decided not to bring it up.

“Perhaps.” I shrugged stiffly. “Or perhaps he was more. Perhaps all these men were servants of God in their own way. Would you like to hear their story?”

I was surprised to find out that Jim was right. They laid down their demolition equipment and listened to my story, the story of all of us who fought and those of us who died all those decades ago to defeat evil in our time.