The flags, simple white squares on thin metal stalks, were an installation art project, arresting in their simplicity and powerful in their number and geometric impact. The memorial was never meant to be permanent. It is fitting that the field be returned to agricultural land – the ability to grow our own food is said by some to be the ultimate homeland security.
The flags served their very important purpose – to keep the cost of war in front of community members and all who drove, walked or biked by over the past six years.
And it wasn’t just the flags themselves that had an impact. It was driving by and seeing the number on the sign out front go up each day, or passing the memorial and seeing the lone volunteer planting the new flags each day, or standing with a screwdriver, changing the red numbers on the sign.
And for the many, many people who helped pull all the flags and re-install them so the field could be mowed several times each year, the task was sombering. It was never a light social gathering and it was always moving.
Moving up and down the rows pulling or planting a flag, it was impossible to forget that every flag represented a lost life, a shattered family, a permanent tragedy. And the flags expanded from the center of the field, all the way to the edges – and then they expanded to represent soldiers lost in Afghanistan.
Not everyone agreed with the use of white flags to mark fallen soldiers. Some felt white represented surrender, but the memorial did its job of keeping the human cost of war in front of us on a daily basis for six years.
And even when people didn’t agree, the memorial kept us all aware that the human cost was growing and kept us talking about the issue of the war which is the most important discourse we can have.
The simple geometrical power of those flags in a field along the scenic corridor of Vermont’s Route 100 through Waitsfield will not soon be forgotten.
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