COMMUNING WITH THE DEAD AT ARLINGTON

I’ve worked in Iraq and Afghanistan since the beginning of the US wars there, and have seen many soldiers killed in combat. So when I was back in the US in spring 2007, I decided to visit Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day. I suppose I felt I owed the place some time.

This part of the cemetery is called Section 60, and it is where soldiers and service members who have died in recent conflicts are buried. There were hundreds of gravestones, many with fresh soil. It was very sadly a work in progress.

I walked through the cemetery, which is positioned on beautiful rolling hills overlooking Washington, DC, with my two-year-old daughter. It was a warm spring afternoon, and you could feel the grief hanging heavy in the air. We came across a woman called Mary McHugh sitting next to a grave, and I waited to speak with her. She was having a private moment. Eventually, she started talking to another visitor, and I introduced myself, telling her I had worked in some of the places these soldiers had been killed in. Then she told me her story.

Her fiance, James Regan, had been on multiple deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Early in 2007, when they had been planning to get married, he stepped on a roadside bomb and was killed. I told her how sorry I was to see her in this place next to a grave. In an awkward moment, for me at least, my daughter pulled on my hand and said: “Daddy, can we go now?” Mary and I exchanged email addresses and I said I would send her a couple of photographs. I thought she might like to have them as a memory of her visit.

We continued our walk through the graves and, about a half hour later, we passed back and saw Mary lying on the grass and speaking into the marble, as if there was so much left to say. I didn’t expect to see her again but, as we had already spoken at some length, I felt comfortable taking a few pictures, while trying not to disturb her.

I take a camera everywhere, and I thought I might take a few pictures, but my real objective that day was to pay my respects. The geography of the cemetery lends itself to photography, and the compositions are easy – it’s everything else that’s hard. Many Americans spend Memorial weekend at the beach or having a barbecue, but here it means something else.

The photograph was widely published at the time. l tried to get in touch with Mary, but she didn’t answer, and I respected that. She was still in mourning. I don’t know what has become of her. I hope she has had a good life. I’ve always been haunted by that scene.

I’ve been in many conflict situations, including quite a bit in combat zones in different parts of the world, but sometimes it’s not the action photo from the frontline that is the most moving. Sometimes it’s the quiet moments taken from the periphery, from the home front, that touch people’s hearts.

by John Moore