Washington D.C Essays - Virginia, Military Personnel,

Washington D.C Have you ever had the chance to travel to Washington D.C and see the historic buildings and monuments? If you haven't, these are my thoughts and opinions on the two most important locations in my mind when I got that chance to travel to our nation's capital. One of the most emotional parts of the five day trip was when we went to Arlington National Cemetery. I took the most pictures at Arlington because even though all the pictures were covered with white marble tombstones, I felt there was a bigger meaning behind the tombs. All 400,000 of the soldiers under that ground fought to keep their way of life or to destroy the way of life that they thought was wrong. They were all buried under the same ground together, so many soldiers who gave their lives to protect the future that they believed in. In my Social studies class we are learning about the civil war and how what the soldiers fought for. We also learned that since Robert E. Lee lived in the North but became a great confederate general the union decided to put Arlington on his 624 acres of land. This cemetery dates back to the 1860's when the war was occurring. Back then the tombstones could be any size or shape depending upon the lost soldier's family. But now the army asks that all tombstones are the same to reserve space. You would think that at a cemetery all you would see would be tombstones and flowers, but at Arlington there is much more. From guards protecting a tomb to rocks on graves and memorials. The change that I saw at Arlington was among the students, before they were horse playing and having fun, which is ok at certain times, but not then. As we walked through the endless rows of gravestones some students started to recognize what the ground that they were standing on really was. But not all students knew how emotional this place was for anyone to endure until we stood in front of the internal flame of John F. Kennedy. As we went deeper into the rows to get to the tomb of unknown soldiers you could start to more easily notice the rocks on the graves. When I asked our tour guide, she told me that they were put on top of the graves to symbolize that one has visited there lost one. Just as Christians leave flowers Jewish people leave rocks. Another thing I noticed was symbols at the top of each tombstone, they were there to show what religion that fallen soldier believed in. The type of military emblem is also included on the headstone along with name and death date. Before we went into the tomb of the Unknown Soldier's we stopped at a segregated line of graves. On these graves were names of the people that were on the space shuttle challenger. The graves around it were the crews of other space travels. We were told to be as quiet as possible when we were approaching the tombs, as the crowd of students surrounded the stairs in front of the guard's multiplied we stood as silent as could be. We watched as one of the soldiers paced back and forth clicking his ankles every time he pivoted. The path the soldiers walked in was walked on so much that it was eroded just by their footsteps. I remembered the Guide told us to counts his footsteps and how long he paused in between paces, she told me to think about the number 21. As the guard walked with the same position, same facial expression I counted his steps, sure enough he took 21 steps before stopping and pivoting. He then would pause for 21 seconds before returning to his pace. In the middle of the soldier's paces another guard comes out to inspect the new guard. He checks his clothing, and his gun for any little speck of dust found on the guard. If he is clean he will switch with the old guard and do the same routine until the next switching of the guard. They do this routine all day every day