Flanders Field American Cemetery, Belgium

 (Photos by Cheryl-Anne Millsap)

On a chilly, rainy day in April, I walked along the rows of stark white marble crosses at the Flanders Field American Cemetery in Belgium. The cemetery is one of 24 kept by the American Battle Monuments Commission.

The 368 men buried there were killed between October 30 and November 11, 1918. Just as the Armistice was signed.

They were only a fraction of the 9 million lost.

Now, almost a century later, we're celebrating Memorial Day, honoring those who have given their lives in military service and I've been thinking about a wreath of paper poppies--the symbol of Flanders Fields--that had been left in the chapel at the Flanders Field cemetery.


The card on the wreath said simply, "From an American who remembers." As I wrote on my Spokesman-Review Home Planet blog, the words touched me. That's something each of us should say more often than once a year.