The boondocks of Gettysburg was settled in 1780, and past the commencement of the Civil War battle that occurred there in 1863, it contained a population of around ii,400 people. The boxing inverse everything. Not only was the town transformed into the symbolic marker of the turning point of the war, but it became the site of one of the greatest speeches ever given: the Gettysburg Address. When you visit today, the unabridged town is geared towards its Civil War history.

Gettysburg is also constrained by the limits of the battleground that surrounds it. You tin't develop that state — it's all historical sites. Homes in Gettysburg that are incredibly old aren't torn downwardly. They're restored. The town is trapped in time because of iii traumatic days 151 years ago. The whole affair's go a war memorial.

I live in DC, about an hour-and-a-one-half drive from Gettysburg, and I'm surrounded past war memorials, too. They're everywhere hither. They were everywhere in my previous habitation of London. I saw them everywhere when I traveled Europe. They're everywhere period. And there's an art to visiting war memorials. These sites demand more attention than fleeting glances and awkward gestures of respect.

How to expect at the memorial

Y'all can usually tell how the war concluded past looking at the memorial itself. The Earth State of war II Memorial on the National Mall in DC is covered in monolithic granite pillars with two giant arches on either side and a fountain in the middle. Information technology's a memorial with the pomp of a disharmonize won. The Vietnam War Memorial is much more somber; it most sinks into the ground, strangely cocky-effacing for an object whose sole purpose is to exist viewed. It'due south a single hue of reflective stone with a simple list of names. At that place are no signs of victory here.

In Ho Chi Minh Metropolis, Vietnam, there's a memorial museum chosen the War Remnants Museum. It used to be called the Museum of American State of war Atrocities. The message at that place is clear: We won, only the scars haven't healed.

Many memorials will have lists of the war expressionless. If yous don't know someone on the list, try to selection a single name and comprehend that that person had a full life, family unit, kids maybe. Once you lot feel similar you sympathize that, footstep dorsum and look at the whole listing.

The terminal exhibit at every memorial is the people visiting with yous. Picket them. In DC and in Normandy, for example, yous'll often run into veterans at the site. They're the virtually fascinating to both spotter and talk to considering the memorial's history runs parallel to their own. While you should obviously be respectful and feel out each state of affairs, I've often constitute that vets want to talk near their experiences.

Observing the other visitors, I'm fascinated by trying to intuit how they feel nearly the war in question. Are they crying? Do they seem angry? Proud? Baffled?

How to feel nigh the memorial

In Hamlet, Hamlet says to Horatio, "There are more than things on heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Endeavor to continue that quote in heed at the state of war memorial (or anywhere, really). This is a place for humility. Regardless of what your opinions are about the war — whether it was just, whether it was a tragedy, whether it was glorious — they're allowed to be felt, only they shouldn't be imposed on other people. Everyone is allowed to express anger or defoliation or sadness or shame hither. It'south non your business organization to estimate.

War is unremarkably depicted in reductive terms, which is moronic. War is one of the virtually all-encompassing, complex human phenomena there is. To convince 2 or more groups they need to impale each other, and then to get them to deed on that conviction, takes a lot of forces working simultaneously. The force of history is behind every state of war, and the politics and the morality and the economics and the applied science of that fourth dimension all manifest themselves in the disharmonize.

War memorials, on the other paw, aren't meant to exist acted on in any way. They're meant to be absorbed, and then processed, then learned from. They aren't places onto which yous should project your ain philosophy; instead, concentrate on assuasive them to impress their message — any that may be — onto you.