Let's write about Ukranian resistance art

Echo opinion published in the The Washington Post:

Anna Husarska is a journalist and policy analyst. 

Mikhail Reva is a painter and a sculptor.

The horrors of war transformed a Ukrainian artist, throwing him into a nation’s effort to resist.

Two years ago, when Russia launched its war against Ukraine, Mikhail Reva, a sculptor, was working on a fountain in Dnipro, a city in the center of the country that is now close to the front lines. 

Before the full-scale invasion, on Feb. 24, 2022, Reva was known for public sculptures that could be found around the country. After the invasion, he became known for something else: protest art.
Through his work, Reva joined the resistance, as he puts it. He screamed his outrage with ink and paint on paper and, later, by welding chunks of shrapnel, broken shell casings and ragged missile fragments into giant metal sculptures. He used wartime materiel to craft a huge Russian bear titled “Moloch, the Beast of War”; he gathered spent bullet casings to create “Russian Souvenir,” a 1,200-pound nesting doll.

Reva lives and works in his hometown of Odessa. In 2022, his workshop was hit by a missile while he was in Bucha, the site of a searing Russian atrocity. His sculptures endured a close call when a missile hit the Odessa National Fine Arts Museum, in November.

Reva is now preparing a project for the Venice Biennale; it will be made from machine gun bullets. 😯😳

To my eyes, Reva’s work, like the spirit of Ukrainians, shines 🌞through even in the darkest of times. 💙
— Anna Husarska

Let's write about the afterlife!

This delightful essay about the Jeopardy game show host Ken Jennings and his book titled "100 things to see after you die", is written by the Chicago writer, Nicholas Cannariato, published in The Washington Post.

GLENDALE, California. — Forest Lawn cemetery here is the final resting place for many of the boldest boldface names in entertainment history, including Jimmy Stewart, Walt Disney, Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Sammy Davis Jr. It’s also the place Ken Jennings happened to visit for the first time on the day he found out Alex Trebek had died.

I met Jennings at the cemetery on a sunny April day to talk about his new book, which is all about the afterlife. If that sounds unexpected, it all started at an airport bookstore. “I saw one of those bucket list travel books,” he said. “I was looking at it upside down, and I thought it said ‘A Thousand Destinations to Die Before You See.’ I came out of the bookstore and I told my friends at the gate, ‘I think I have an idea for a book.’”

The idea would become “100 Places to See After You Die,” which Scribner is publishing Tuesday. In it, the “Jeopardy!” host — and the show’s all-time winningest champion — surveys ideas from around the world about what happens to us after we die. It’s written in the form of a travel guide, with an eclectic mix of 100 accounts, ranging from mythology and religion to ideas floated in books, movies and TV shows. In the introduction, Jennings suggests that readers dip in and out of the book, consulting it as a “post-bucket list.”

“Whatever the end is, whether it exists or not, that’s got the meaning of life in it,” Ken Jennings said. (Christina Gandolfo for The Washington Post)

Threaded throughout are comic asides and passing insights in the form of information boxes with headings such as “Meet the Locals,” “When to Go,” “Best to Avoid,” “Time-Savers” and “Off the Beaten Path.” The book’s tone is light and irreverent, sometimes bordering on shticky. But ultimately it reads a lot like what you expect in a book by Jennings: long on knowledge and mercifully short on claims about the grand truth of things.

“The miracle of life and consciousness seems already so unusual to me that it seems like such a waste if that all just sparks for some shorter time and then vanishes,” Jennings said. “We would love to believe that that’s not true and that it’s not just such a brief flowering. Of course, the other attractive thing about it is that we’re never going to know.”

Jennings has been interested in death and the afterlife for as long as he can remember. Part of his interest when he was a child stemmed from the fact that he hadn’t yet experienced any deeply personal losses. “And so,” he said, “a lot of my formative experiences with death were fictional characters, like Spock dying, Mr. Hooper dying, Jean Grey from the X-Men. That’s the kind of American experience with death. You talk about it more with Big Bird than with your own loved ones sometimes.”

Jennings describes himself as “a generalist who loves knowing a tiny bit about a million things.” The book stems from his interest in how “people’s ideas about their own culture and priorities change” based on how they see the next world.

Of course, how exactly one sees the afterlife is tricky. In the book, Jennings nods, if only obliquely, to the elephant in the room: The afterlife is the speculation of living people who, you know, haven’t died before. He expresses skepticism with dollops of dry wit, which can feel reflexive but do usefully lighten some very serious, even grim material.

Take, for instance, Islam’s version of hell, Jahannam, which is similar to other hells. Jennings describes it as “a series of vast rings” in a “crater on the underside of the world,” consisting of “seven different layers of torture, called Inferno, Blaze, Flame, Furnace, Fire, Hellfire, and Abyss.” He walks readers through the process that might end in a stay there: “Don’t be alarmed when two blue-black beings with red eyes and terrifying tusks appear to you in the grave. These are the angels Munkar and Nakir, and they’ve come to ask you three questions: ‘Who is your God?,’ ‘What is your religion?,’ and ‘Who is your prophet?’ We recommend going with ‘Allah,’ ‘Islam,’ and ‘Muhammad’ as your answers here.”

Heaven in Islam is called Jannah, which means “garden” or “paradise.” Jennings observes how “most traditional heavens are bright and sunny,” but in Jannah things are more sensuous: “There are aromatic rains of rosewater, while all the cooling water you can drink bubbles up from springs smelling of camphor and ginger.”

But the afterlife is also about our need for abiding connection. Jennings said that part of what motivates his own hopes for it is possible reunion with the people he’s known and loved. “When you think about what you can take with you,” he said, “it’s clearly not material things. But it might be the relationships you have. I would like to think that that continues.” There might not be anything more human than feeling that our bonds with each other are eternal.

Jennings does some of his most entertaining writing in the less-devout sections of the book: those that address how literature, movies and TV have dealt with the subject. One example is his (most excellent) account of the movie “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.” To escape Death in the movie, Jennings writes, you can give him a “melvin, which is a most egregious type of wedgie,” or “you’ll need to challenge Death to a contest, like the game of chess from Bergman’s ‘The Seventh Seal’ — and win. Be warned that Death has only been defeated once — and he was a super-poor sport about it.”

Another conception of the afterlife from Hollywood is even more surprising: Iowa. In “Field of Dreams,” long-dead baseball players emerge from cornfields to play again with the living. Even if the well-rendered schmaltz of the movie is too much for some palates, credit where credit is due: The vast openness of Iowa’s landscape is an inspired choice for a portal to the beyond.

I asked Jennings if his faith — he’s a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — informed his thoughts about the subject. He said that “coming from a Latter-day Saint background, there’s a real emphasis on [the idea that] even the afterlife has growth — that it’s not just a static cloud, but that you could still learn things and do things.” To him, it’s an attractive part of the faith, “that the afterlife is not just a reward. It’s not just the dessert, but there’s something to do and places to go.”

That’s in part why he chose to write his book in the form of a travel guide, since such books are all about “the vibe of a place,” he said. “You’re trying to convey not just what time the bars close or how regular the buses are, but you’re really trying to convey what you know, what is the spirit of the place that you can’t get at home. And I guess that’s exactly what’s implicit in how we think about God, too. What can you get from him that you can’t get from your loved ones, your king, your boss, your favorite YouTuber? Must be something. Or else, why God?”

Which is to say that religion is important in his life, but more in the present moment than for reasons having to do with the hereafter. Jennings consults it, he said, as a way to wonder: “What kind of person am I going to be today? I think that might be unusual, for a religious person to tell you that. I should be fixated on my heavenly reward maybe, but I’m not. Maybe that’s a sign of a less robust or certain faith.”

Writing the book has changed him, too. “Years and years of working on this book,” he said, “and the funny thing is, I now find myself thinking about the afterlife all the time. Whatever the end is, whether it exists or not, that’s got the meaning of life in it.”

The cemetery was closing as Jennings and I walked back to our cars. There was a sense of an ending. It was only for a short time, in a place of the dead, talking eternity with the king of earthly knowledge, but I felt there was a serenity to our conversation. 

Yet throughout, he kept getting phone calls. He was polite and apologetic about them, but whatever they were about, they seemed urgent. Acutely aware of our surroundings, I didn’t ask who it was.

ncannariato@gmail.com.

Nicholas Cannariato is a writer and teacher in Chicago.

For more information check out the List of 12 Famous People Buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park by Minda Powers-Douglas, BA in English

Let's write about World War One and the unknown "doughboys"

"You are not forgotten". 

This historic find reminds me about when my husband and I visited this same area in France when we visited his uncle Napoleon's (Nap) World War I remains, in the very same American Veterans Cemetery where this unknown solider will now be buried with honors. This cemetery is really lovely, but in the sea of headstones, there is hardly anyone alive who goes to visit the graves. Published in The Washington Post reported by Michael E. Ruane.

Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France

Unknown WWI soldier, found a century later, will now be buried with honors. The remains of an American ‘doughboy,’ whose identity is unknown, were accidentally unearthed in a French village last year. On Feb. 8, 2022, a local undertaker, Jean-Paul Feval, was digging a grave in the cemetery at Villers-sur-Fère, a small village in the farm country of northeastern France.

The cemetery was beside a large field at the edge of town, on Rue Saint-Denis, just up the street from the old church of St. John the Baptist. Feval had dug about four feet down when he began to unearth human bones, along with artifacts that would later include pieces of a helmet, a stretcher, a trench knife and a corroded, unreadable dog tag. He had found the remains of an unknown American soldier, killed in July 1918, during fighting that had strewn the landscape around Villers-sur-Fère with hundreds of fallen “doughboys” during World War I.

Next month, more than a century later, the American Battle Monuments Commission plans to rebury the anonymous soldier in its nearby Oise-Aisne American Cemetery, about 70 miles northeast of Paris, where 6,000 of his comrades already rest.

The concealed remains of the World War I soldier lie alongside military artifacts found with them and an American flag. (American Battle Monuments Commission)

It will be the first burial of an unknown American from World War I in 35 years, the commission said, and comes two years after the country marked the centennial of the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

It also comes as the Arlington-based monuments commission celebrates its centennial this year.

World War One U.S. Doughboys

The American Battle Monuments Commission, which was started in 1923, to honor U.S. World War I dead overseas, operates 26 cemeteries on foreign soil where 123,000 service members from World Wars I and II are buried, and thousands of others are memorialized. “It’s a very important message for families of people who are still missing,” he said, and for current and future members of the services.

 “You are not forgotten.”

The soldier’s discovery “is an extraordinarily big deal,” said Mike Knapp, the commission’s director of historical services. “Here we are … 105 years after this guy died and … he’s getting a full honors, military funeral just like some veteran would get today at Arlington” cemetery, Knapp said. “I think that says a great deal.”

“I get choked up saying it,” he said. “But I think it’s really, really true.” The soldier’s grave will be marked with a marble cross that reads: “Here Rests In Honored Glory An American Soldier Known But to God.”

The Army’s chief of staff, Gen. James C. McConville, is scheduled to speak at the June 7 funeral. The commission said the soldier will be buried with a Purple Heart medal.

The Battle:  In late July 1918, the U.S. Army’s 42d Infantry Division was pushing back German forces around the Ourcq River, less than a mile north of Villers-sur-Fère. 

World War I — 1914-1918 — would end about three months later. with the defeat of Germany and its allies by France, Britain, the United States, Russia and their allies. But the closing weeks of the war saw some of the conflict’s most bitter fighting. “It wasn’t people in trenches looking at each other,” Hubert Caloud, superintendent of the American Cemetery, said in a telephone interview. 

“As the Americans came up north, they had to fight for every little village … every little farmhouse … every piece of woods.”

“How did they do that?” he said. “They had to charge across open fields.”

The 42d was called the Rainbow Division because it contained outfits from across the country. Its chief of staff was future World War II hero Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who reportedly gave the division its nickname. 

One of its units was the 165th Infantry Regiment — previously called the “Fighting 69th” regiment — that included many Irish Americans from New York.

Francis Duffy was its chaplain. (A bronze statue of him stands in New York’s Times Square.)

The regiment lost 264 men in the Battle of the Ourcq River, according the New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center.

Joyce Kilmer was killed by a German sniper’s bullet 100 years ago this summer, on July 30, 1918, during the Second Battle of the Marne in World War I. The celebrated writer is best known for his 1913 poem “Trees.”

Among the dead was the poet Joyce Kilmer, author of the poem “Trees.” He was shot in the head by a sniper. “God rest his dear and gallant soul,” Father Duffy wrote after the war. Kilmer is buried in the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery. The newly found soldier was identified as American because of the fragments of American equipment — bullets, uniform buttons, trench knife — that were with his remains, said Caloud, the cemetery superintendent.
“There was no doubt in our minds,” he said.

In 2006, the almost complete skeletal remains of a World War I American soldier, Pvt. Thomas D. Costello, were found by relic hunters in eastern France.

After experts were able to identify him, he was returned to the United States and buried in Arlington Cemetery in 2010. In this recent case, the unknown’s remains consisted only of some vertebrae, ribs and other bones. “I was disappointed that we didn’t find more,” Caloud said. “He was somebody’s son,” he said. “Maybe somebody’s father. Maybe somebody’s husband. We don’t know.” How he was killed is a mystery.

“This is a combat death,” said Caloud, who served in the Marine Corps for 30 years. “He had an ammunition belt on. … It could have been a traumatic explosion, and that’s all that was left of the guy.” Or part of his body was previously removed by accident, he said.
“This is an American soldier who was violently killed, and I wanted him buried,” Caloud said. “I didn’t want him to be a bunch of bones on an aluminum table that no one would ever pay attention to.”
The discovery of part of a stretcher in the grave is evocative. “During the fighting they tried to get rid of the bodies as soon as they could,” Caloud said. “They would roll them up in ponchos. They’d roll them up in blankets. They could carry them on stretchers.”
“My guess is he was dead, and what was left of him was put on a stretcher,” he said. We believe the people buried along that wall were from the 165th Regiment,” Caloud said, although other units were in the area and this man might have been from one of those, too.
The soldier was probably with the Rainbow Division because the village where he was found was in the area where the division fought, the commission said.

And he could well have been with the 165th, which saw intense action around Villers-sur-Fère. More than 30 Americans, including the unknown, were hastily buried by a stone wall that surrounded the village cemetery.

“The town of Villers-sur-Fère was throughout the action a part of the battlefield,” Father Duffy wrote in his postwar memoir, “Father Duffy’s Story.”

“Nearly one-third of those who lost their lives in this action received their death wounds from shell fire in and around Villers-sur-Fère,” he recounted.

One of those killed was Maj. William B. Hudson, a 40-year-old Washington physician, who was serving in the 165th. Hudson was standing in the doorway of a building in the village when he was struck by a fragment from an enemy gas shell. It “hit him full in the chest, killing him instantly,” Duffy wrote. “We buried him sadly by the cemetery wall where already too many of our men were lying in their last long sleep.”Hudson was later exhumed and reburied in Arlington Cemetery. His name is carved on the D.C. War Memorial on the National Mall.

After the war, most of those buried by the wall were probably moved to larger cemeteries, or sent home, said Knapp, the commission historian. Except for this unknown. “The question remains; ‘Was this guy overlooked entirely? Did they think they had him?’” Knapp said. “We’ll never know.”

After Feval discovered the remains, he called the police. The French national veterans office was also called in.

A noted French World War I archaeologist, Yves Desfossés, was summoned. The grave was expanded, and more material was found.
On June 7, plans are for the unknown soldier to be buried in a silver casket, and borne to his grave amid the sounds of an artillery salute and Chopin’s funeral march.

Let's write about how to become a back yard bird watcher

Want to become a birder? Start in your own yard!

Birdwatching at home is a powerful way to learn about your local ecosystem. Here’s how to attract a variety of species and identify their behaviors. Echo report by  Scott Kirkwood published in The Washington Post.

Birds help humans to better understand our earth's ecosystem.

Every day, bird lovers get to watch tiny wildlife documentaries unfold from their own windows — the search for food, the predator-prey relationship, even the ways that climate change shifts a species’ typical habitat.

Cardinal in the Holly Bush in our Topsham Maine yard (L'Heureux photograph)

“The great thing about birds is they’re everywhere,” says Nicholas Lund, who leads outreach for Maine Audubon and shares his brand of avian humor as The Birdist. “They aren’t found only in national parks or protected areas — they’ll come to you.”

With the right approach, you can make those visits far more likely: “Think about what you have to offer birds,” says Lund. “It could be a place to nest, it could be food and it could be shelter.” Once they start flocking, you can experience the joy of identifying each species and their unique behaviors.

Attract birds with food:  A feeder is the quickest way to create a backyard feast, but it’s not the only one. As Lund points out, “not all birds even eat seeds.” Woodpeckers, for instance, prefer suet, orioles like oranges and grape jelly, and hummingbirds enjoy nectar, or sugar water, which you can make at home.

The best long-term approach to bring birds to your yard is to add native plants.

Many birds love seed-bearing plants, and just about every plant will naturally bring bugs, another key food source. In his books “Bringing Nature Home” and “Nature’s Best Hope,” Doug Tallamy, a professor of entomology at the University of Delaware, identifies “powerhouse plants”— such as sunflowers in the Mid-Atlantic and native goldenrod just about everywhere — that attract appealing insects like caterpillars. (Avoid using pesticides, of course, since the “pests” are exactly what draw birds.) The National Audubon Society offers more guidance for creating a bird-friendly yard and suggestions of plants that provide food.

Window bird feeder in our Topsham Maine house attracts mostly Chickadees and Sparrows (L'Heureux photograph).

Once you’ve set up that natural buffet, you can also fill a few feeders with seed. Those supplies are widely available in pet stores, hardware stores and specialty shops such as Wild Birds Unlimited.

Different birds gravitate to different kinds of feeders — some like tube feeders, others prefer platforms or simply to eat seed off the ground. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has plenty of species-specific recommendations. 

Also, you can research which types of seeds particular birds prefer, but just about any seed will bring them to your yard. Some feeders, such as the Bird Buddy, are outfitted with a camera that sends close-up photos and videos to your phone.

Nevertheless, there are some risks to feeding wild birds from a feeder, including the possibility of inadvertently spreading disease. To prevent this, Audubon’s experts recommend scrubbing your feeders with a solution of 10 percent non-chlorinated bleach a few times a year.

Window collisions are another danger. The Cornell Lab suggests placing feeders within three feet of the glass or more than 30 feet away to keep birds safe; if a feeder is too far from a tree or other shelter, it can expose smaller birds to hawks looking for their own lunch. (The Cornell Lab’s Feeder Watch has more details about determining the right feeder placement.)

A bird seed wreath (L'Heureux photograph)

Create a bird-friendly habitat:  Offering birds a comfortable, safe place to hang out is another way to bring them to your yard.

“During spring and summer, when birds start nesting, habitat becomes really important for a bird — and by habitat, I mean living space,” says Purbita Saha, an avid birder and deputy editor at Popular Science. “If you want to attract songbirds like wrens, chickadees and sparrows looking for shelter, you might collect a little pile of brush by gathering downed branches from the last winter storm.” Some species, such as Eastern towhees and common yellowthroats, will make their nests in brush piles.

You can also build or buy a bird box (a.k.a. a birdhouse), which essentially mimics a tree cavity. Birds can be incredibly particular about the height, size and orientation of the opening, so get advice from Cornell’s Nestwatch site, which also has tips for dealing with predators and competitors like bees and wasps. Bird baths are more than decoration, too — they help birds care for their feathers and remove pests when water is scarce; in winter, place a bird bath in the sun or find one that plugs in, to keep it from freezing.

Let the birdwatching begin: Now that your home is a destination for the feathered set, you can learn the ins and outs of observing and identifying them.

Orioles are beautiful birds but we seldom see them in Topsham, Maine.

Although the adjective “squirrel-proof” has been attached to many bird feeders, you’ll typically find squirrels attached to those feeders, too.  Adding a baffle — essentially a dome — above or below a feeder can make it harder for a squirrel to land. Some feeders have weight-activated springs that shut off access when triggered by a squirrel. Lund sprinkles a little seed on the ground, to make feeders less tempting to lazier squirrels. But know that feeding birds probably means feeding squirrels, too.

Tykee James, president of Washington D.C.’s Audubon chapter, tells people to start off with a “Familiar 5,” as a foundation for further learning: “Identify a few birds that you know really well,” he says, “then get to understand their habitat, the markings of a male and a female, and get to know their song. Are they in your backyard because they’re migrating, or are they locals looking for food and shelter?” (James suggested that as a resident of D.C., my Familiar 5 might be rock dove, European starling, house sparrow, American robin and pileated woodpecker.)

Lund and James recommend a guidebook or paper journal for taking notes and sketching. Many birders have a “life list” that includes every species they’ve ever seen. 

But, if you’re not as obsessed with all the counting and labeling, that’s okay. “For some people, that aspect of gamifying birdwatching really drives their passion, but it’s a double-edged sword that drives other people away,” says James. “Birding isn’t a competition. Sometimes it’s just about stopping and sharing one moment with one bird.”

To help spot those birds, get one of the many Sibley field guides, the go-to books for seasoned birders. If you prefer a digital option, try the Merlin Bird ID app from Cornell, which offers surprisingly accurate suggestions based on photos or a few moments of birdsong that you submit — “Shazam for birds,” as some have called it.

Saha agrees: “Birding is so much more than counting,” she says. “It’s understanding how birds use the landscape, how they interact with plants, how they eat different insects on your property … all of that helps you understand your own local ecosystem. That’s the power of birding right at home.”

To capture those details better, get a solid pair of binoculars, because even in a small backyard, the magnification lets you see things you can’t spot with your naked eye, such as bird dances and other mating rituals. Lund recommends the Nikon Prostaff series, which includes a few models in the $150 range, all of which should last for generations.

Last year, Lund saw his 700th species in the continental United States, but he has just as much fun keeping track of the birds around his home. “I’ve seen 112 species in my backyard, and the most recent one was a mallard,” he says. “Under any other circumstances, I’m not that excited to see a mallard. But when I see one in my backyard, I’m fist-pumping, jumping up and down. And when migrating birds come through, I may be lucky enough to see a Cape May warbler or blue-headed vireo that’s just stopping for a day or two, refueling … on its way from South America to Canada.”

Scott Kirkwood is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.

Let's write about Revolutionary War cemetery remains- Rest In Peace

This echo report was published in The Washington Post by Kathleen Parker:

Soon, 14 Revolutionary War soldiers will finally rest in peace

Volunteers in Camden, South Carolina, conduct a funeral honors ceremony for Patriot soldiers whose remains were recently discovered at the Camden Battlefield. (Kathleen Parker /The Washington Post)

CAMDEN, South Carolina — A Swedish mother visiting her daughter watched in wonderment at the crowd gathered for a funeral honors ceremony for Revolutionary War troops — replete with a parade, a play, prayers and a plethora of dignitaries — to honor 14 soldiers who died on Aug. 16, 1780.

I turned to her and said, “We love our wars.” To which I should have added, “And we love our warriors.”

The soldiers’ remains were discovered last fall, buried as shallow as six inches deep in the sandy soil where they fell during the Battle of Camden. Thanks to the work of archeologists, coroners and historians, aided by buttons and other military paraphernalia, the battleground remains have been determined to belong to 12 Continental soldiers, one British loyalist and one British regular. Thirteen were honored as heroes in ceremonies planned by countless volunteers, both civilian and military. The 14th individual was determined to have had at least some Native American ancestry and so will be buried with help from the Catawba Nation and the Lumbee Tribe.

In fact, the reinterment of all the soldiers at the Camden Battlefield site is being delayed until the U.S. Army and the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust can turn the ground into a military cemetery. The Army, which has a legislative mandate to protect military remains in perpetuity, buries its dead only in military cemeteries. For now, at least, the carefully crafted coffins are being held in a safe place until preparations for the cemetery are completed.

The Battle of Camden is historically important for many reasons, not least because it was the bloodiest battle in the American Revolutionary War but also because, well, Camden lost, bolstering Britain’s “Southern Strategy,” its plan to concentrate its forces in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. Even though the Patriots far outnumbered the Loyalists — 4,000 to 2,000 — they were out-trained and out-equipped, and many of them had dysentery. Whereas the British were armed with fancy bayonets affixed to their rifles, the often underage Patriots had only primitive, inaccurate muskets — if any — that they hadn’t been trained to use.

More than 900 Patriots died in the Battle of Camden. Another 1,000 were captured, many of them consigned to prison ships to waste away of disease and malnourishment. Among the British soldiers at Camden, just 68 died, 245 were wounded and 11 went missing.

The Southern Strategy — a concept most Americans probably identify with Richard Nixon — was at this time the work of King George III, or at least his military advisers. 

Long before the Civil War, the South was identified as unique and separate, which, then as now, wasn’t necessarily a compliment. Beginning in the 1660s, the Carolina Colony, which stretched from Virginia south to Florida and west to the Pacific Ocean, was populated by hardscrabble farmers in the northern half and planter-barons overseeing vast estates under slave labor in the southern half.

The remnants of those times and events can be seen today in a patriotic devotion to “place,” in the number of steeples per capita, and in the strong identification with war — and defeat — and with the military in general. There’s a reason that the South produces more military recruits (41 percent) than any other part of the country.

Streets and houses in Camden pay homage to military leaders, including some from the other side, who fought or died in one battle or another. A major thoroughfare, DeKalb Street, honorsMaj. Gen. Johann de Kalb, who led a division of Maryland and Delaware Continentals southward and died from wounds sustained in the Battle of Camden. 

Visitors here can’t miss the Georgian-style Kershaw-Cornwallis house, named both for town founder Joseph Kershaw, who built it, and for Lord Charles Cornwallis, who marched to Camden with 2,500 British troops and seized the home as a supply post.

We take our wars and our warriors seriously.

An exception to this rule is British-born Gen. Horatio Gates, who in addition to slandering the man whose job he wanted, George Washington, fled the Battle of Camden and galloped 180 miles north to escape the fate of so many under his command. Fittingly, he was the butt of several hilarious jokes in a local play, “The Battle of Camden,” written by Tony Scully, a transplanted Hollywood screenwriter and former Camden mayor. His stellar hour-long production ought to be adopted by school and local theater groups.

It featured local actors as well as a handful of cadets from Camden Military Academy, an impressive student drum and fife team (brothers Matthew Slade, 13, and Jonathan Slade, 15), and an interesting trio of women in wartime solidarity — a Native American, an African American (enslaved) and a White plantation mistress. The three testified to their various stations but also to their shared efforts to help the Revolution with healing, sewing and cooking. The play’s combination of history and seriousness had just enough humor to keep people in their seats.

Ceremonies began early on April 22, with a solemn procession of horse- and mule-drawn caissons loaded with the flag-draped coffins of the dead soldiers. I should mention that all the details of these events were the product of meticulous planning and local people volunteering their skills. The coffins were handcrafted by former theologian and minister Philip Hultgren, who learned woodworking from his Swedish-emigrant grandfather. Every nail was hand-forged by Jack Hurley, a retired University of Memphis history professor and a self-taught blacksmith. To be true to the period, Hurley created 30 two-inch nails per coffin, each one needing about 100 blows from his 4-pound hammer to create.

Hultgren’s authentic 18th-century-style coffins have six corners. Each one measures 5 feet, 6 inches in length and is finished with linseed oil.

“I wanted them to look like they were fashioned by someone who cared and who was a hands-on kind of person,” Hultgren said, adding, “They’re not perfect, but they look really good, and they have that sense of this is real, this is what a family would do.”

So it might have been in the summer of 1780. And so it is in the spring of 2023. Yes, we love our warriors. May they finally, eventually, rest in peace.