By: Keith Kappes
Columnist
Carter County Times
Memorial Day was nearly three weeks away when I escorted my 98-year-old father-in-law to St. Louis for the annual reunion of his 95th Bomb Group, the World War II Army Air Corps unit where he flew B-17 bombers from England.
The itinerary included a visit to Jefferson Barracks, an old Army post on the banks of the Mississippi just below St. Louis. 2nd Lt. Ray Hobbs had received part of his officer training there but couldn’t recall any details except a close view of that mighty river.
We went to Jefferson Barracks to tour a POW-MIA museum and to attend a ceremony honoring seven ground crew members from the 95th BG who were among 19 killed when a 500-pound bomb accidentally detonated on the runway at Alconbury RAF in England in 1943.
They were interred in a common grave at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery which shares the former Army post acreage with a VA medical complex, two Missouri National Guard units and a county park.
No one in the group had seen the cemetery before. We were stunned into respectful silence as we came into view of more than 330 acres of carefully aligned white headstones marking the graves of more than 246,000 men and women who had served our nation in a military uniform.
Only Arlington National Cemetery in Washington is larger with about 400,000 graves. Like other military cemeteries I’ve seen in the U. S. and in England, the burial grounds were beautifully maintained, another show of respect for the fallen.
I was overwhelmed by feelings of admiration and gratitude while standing at attention with the other visitors as the uniformed bugler, himself a disabled veteran, played “Taps” after the names of the deceased airmen were read aloud.
My father-in-law gave the best description of the cemetery as we both wiped our eyes and left the gravesite.
“Truly, we are standing today on hallowed ground.”
