War and remembrance
on a human scale

I'm grateful that the war memorials of today have become more realistic than those of my childhood. The new D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Va., is on a human scale and depicts the dead and the dying as well as those who appear to survive the carnage. Heroic men but not invincible.

The war memorials of my childhood were often on pedestals and larger than life, designed to glorify war and possibly induce young men and boys to fight for their own piece of glory in some future battle. The dead and the dying were never shown, only their names etched in stone.

Memorials should not frighten men and women into avoiding a just or necessary war, but they should remind them what price glory.

--Steven Petranik

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