The names of 49 heroes are etched on the plaque of the Bladensburg World War I Veterans Memorial—erected by Gold Star mothers and the local post of The American Legion. For nearly 100 years, it has stood in honor of 49 men of Prince George’s County, Maryland, who gave their lives fighting for freedom in WWI.
Their stories are worth remembering. Yet, if some secularists get their way, this surrogate gravestone for those 49 heroes and others like it could soon be bulldozed. First Liberty Institute represents The American Legion and has asked the Supreme Court of the United States to protect this memorial.
Though it has stood at the entrance to the National Defense Highway for nearly a century, the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit recently determined that the memorial is unlawful. The court determined that, because of its cross-shape—the design Gold Star mothers and The American Legion used to recall the battlefield grave markers of Europe under which their sons had been buried—and its placement on land acquired by the state of Maryland, it violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
That opinion has placed the memorial’s fate squarely in the hands of the Supreme Court of the United States. On behalf of The American Legion, we have asked the court to review the 4th Circuit’s decision. Absent that review and reversal, the future of this gravestone to the 49 men of Prince George’s County, is uncertain. What is more, if the Supreme Court does nothing, other monuments and memorials—whether in the lush greens of Arlington or in small town America—could also be destroyed.
We humans forget what we do not see. The surviving families and returning veterans of the time knew that. They believed that it was America that won the First World War and that their sons would be forgotten without a visible reminder of their supreme sacrifice.
In 1918 America, remembrance took place in small towns like Bladensburg. Whether or not towns have memorials for the Civil War or WWII, they almost certainly have something for the Great War. These communities believed that the lives their young men gave in preserving freedom in “the war to end all wars” should be indelibly preserved in the American psyche. Mothers who lost sons and veterans who lost comrades believed Americans should never forget places like Ypes or Ardennes, Cambrai, or Belle, or names like Redman or Hulbert, Morrow or Seaburn.
Those who built monuments like the Bladensburg World War I Veterans Memorial feared a world where the efforts of their loved ones would go unrecognized or, worse, be forgotten. Now, a century after the armistice that ended the war, few Americans are aware of what their ancestors accomplished on those faraway battlefields.
Any discussion of the Bladensburg Memorial must start and end with memory. The monument was erected to remember men from a small town who died in a big war characterized by row after row of thousands of shallow American graves on foreign soil. Typically, their only marking was a plain wooden cross. This image – fields of crosses marking the graves of the military dead – was seared into the American consciousness as a symbol of the fallen. Little wonder that the mothers and veterans of Prince George’s County chose this same symbol for a memorial to honor and remember their fallen.
American mothers mourned the loss of more than 116,000 of their sons—in just about a year’s time. The Bladensburg Memorial is an incarnation of the effort families and friends spent trying to cope with enormous tragedy. Razing it not only removes the memory of the area’s fallen; it dishonors them.
Jeremy Dys is Deputy General Counsel to First Liberty Institute, a non-profit law firm dedicated to defending religious freedom. Declan Riley Kunkel is a senior history major at Yale University and legal intern at First Liberty.
