I took a trip to visit Jill and Jared (and family) over the MLK weekend. It was a wonderful trip. While I was there, we visited Arlington National Cemetery. Richard Snelding, a friend from work, had a close childhood friend, Jonas Kelsall, who was killed in the Chinook helicopter that was shot down in Afghanistan in 2011, and I promised Richard that the next time I was in the area, I’d try to visit his grave. Richard went to the funeral services, but those were held in Shreveport, where they grew up. Jonas (the soldier) is buried at Arlington, and Richard couldn’t go to that part. I figured we’d find the grave (they have a terminal in the visitor’s center where you can look up locations of graves and it prints out directions), take a picture, and then move on. But it was so much more than that.
When we first got there, before
we found the grave, I was already amazed to see that they still had the
wreaths on all the graves. I knew that a nonprofit organization lays
wreaths on all the graves at Arlington in December. I’ve seen pictures of
it before, and when I was visiting Jill a year ago in December, a woman in her
ward talked about volunteering to go help lay the wreaths. Somebody goes
to a lot of work MAKING all those wreaths, too. I can’t imagine how many
it must be. Anyway, I figured the wreaths would be gone by now, but they
were all still there, and still in very good condition. There was a tiny
bit of browning here and there, but nothing significant, all with a big red
bow. They keep the grass immaculately groomed, so they must have to move
those wreaths and then put them back to mow, which would be a big job in
itself. (I assume you still have to mow grass in the winter, as long as
there’s no snow on the ground? Not much
experience in this department.) 
Just Jill, Kadence, and I went out there after church on Sunday. When we got to the grave, we took pictures, and we had Kadence hold up the flag showing that he was a SEAL (the wind was blowing like crazy). He was a member of SEAL Team 6, and a bunch of them were killed when their helicopter was shot down.
We took pictures of where the tombstones began from the deaths that day and had Kadence stand at the end, there were a lot of them. I have since looked up more information about what happened that day, and 38 people died in the crash, plus a SEAL working dog, so a lot of the soldiers are probably buried somewhere else, maybe in the veterans’ cemetery in their own home town.
The tombstone next to Jonas’s
said “Here lies the unidentified remains” from that day, and we thought that
was strange. I’ve since found out that sometimes they have remains left
over that they can’t identify (I imagine a lot of those caskets hold pieces and
parts of people instead of intact bodies), so they put them together in another
grave, so that’s what they did here. The tombstone shows in one of the
pictures I took of Jonas’s grave, and I have cropped it so you can see it. It says, “Here lies the Unidentified Remains
of Extortion 17. Afghanistan August 6
2011”
They call the incident
Extortion 17 because that was the call sign of their helicopter that crashed. It was hit by a RPG (Rocket Propelled
Grenade) soon after it took off after the soldiers participated in battle there
for at least two hours.
Instead of just taking
pictures and moving on, we stayed with the grave for a while. It truly
felt like we were spending time with him and the others there. When we
were finally ready to leave, we decided to have a prayer. It was actually
Jill’s idea. She and Kadence got on their knees and she suggested
it. I knelt down too and I said the prayer. Even though we never met
Jonas, Jill and I cried and the spirit was so strong that I felt it for
days. It ended up being a very spiritual experience and totally
unexpected. We walked around for a while with wet and slightly muddy
knees, but we didn’t care.
Then as we walked from the
grave to the Tomb of the Unknowns, we noticed a few wreathes were blown over,
so we fixed them. Then we spent more time picking up wreaths and
returning them to their spots. Kadence went from “I’m tired, I can’t walk
anymore” to being very enthusiastic about picking up the wreaths and she was
running all over the place, fixing them. We all participated, and before
long it got out of control. It was a windy day and quite a few wreaths
were tipped over. “Come on, Grandma! Here are four more!
Look, there’s a whole row!” I got my exercise that day.
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| The soldier guarding the tomb. He walks very precisely back and forth on the black runner. |
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| The officer inspecting the new guard to make sure everything is perfect |
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| Making the change |
