Memorial Day: Honoring America's War Dead

Today, more than two hundred sixty thousand men and women are buried there.  Some fought in the Revolutionary War in the seventeen hundreds.  The eighty-hectare cemetery is in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.

The black stone walls are set into the earth.  They are about seventy-six meters long.  They meet to form a wide V.  Cut into the walls are the names of more than fifty eight-thousand Americans killed or missing-in-action.

The memorial includes a group of nineteen statues of soldiers.  These soldiers appear to be walking up a hill, toward an American flag.  The Korean War has been called "the last foot soldier's war."

In nineteen eighty-six, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation to honor women in the military.  Since nineteen ninety-seven, a memorial near the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia has done just that.  It is called the Women in Military Service for America Memorial.