Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Armed Forces Memorial

Letters home.
Norfolk Virginia has an impressive downtown waterfront.
USS Wisconsin
We walked it as part of the Mermaid city's Cannonball Trail, a 40 stop walking tour of Norfolk's downtown historic sites.
Approaching the water we began to catch glimpses of the USS Wisconsin, an Iowa class Battleship that is berthed there as a museum. The Wisconsin served in WWII and the Korean War and after modernization the Gulf War providing support during Operation Desert Storm.
The massive battleship is part of the Nauticus National Maritime Center which is the focal point of the waterfront area.

We continued along the waterfront boardwalk where we found a small corner park.  We had arrived at Norfolk's Armed Forces Memorial.
The memorial consists of a flagpole with 20 bronze casts in the shape of pieces of paper scattered over the boardwalk as though blown in from the water. Each bronze in inscribed with the words of a soldier writing home to his family. There are letters dating from the Revolutionary War through the Gulf War. Many times words told us the era they were written in before we saw the date.

None of the military personnel that wrote the letters featured at the memorial returned home.
The Armed Forces Memorial in Norfolk is thought provoking and sad.  The letters are a poignant  reminder of the sacrifices made by our military members and their families over the course of 240 years. I was pleased to see evidence throughout the waterfront that Norfolk honors its military heritage.






Statue on the Norfolk Waterfront 

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