Santa Monica's Count of the Fallen Troops December 2009
 Volunteers gather every Saturday to set up the crosses at Arlington West in Santa Monica, CA Photo by Lauren Rigney | Despite the constant reminders of the war American troops are fighting overseas in Iraq, many Americans remain uninformed of the war’s violent progress. A group of volunteers at Santa Monica Beach is working hard to reverse this by setting up a memorial every Sunday that offers visitors a frighteningly honest picture of the cost of war.
Local members of Veterans for Peace, a national organization of anti-war veterans, created Arlington West in February 2004 to physically depict how many Americans troops have died to date. Each white cross carefully placed in the Santa Monica sand represents one American troop lost in the war. Back in 2005, volunteers were working with around 500 crosses. Now, nearly 4,400 soldiers have died, and volunteers are running out of beach space. To compensate, white crosses are painted red to represent not one, but 10 fallen troops. |
Santa Monica City Council member Kevin McKeown has publicly supported Arlington West since its founding, but rejects the idea of it being a war protest. “Arlington West is not an anti-war demonstration – it’s an honor to the fallen.” Because Arlington West is a peaceful installation that requires no permit, McKeown said that the City Council has had little involvement with the project other than visits that council members have personally chosen to make on their Sundays.
While McKeown sees Arlington West more as a memorial, Veterans for Peace purposely designed the installment to be nonbiased so each person can form his or her own interpretations about not only Arlington West, but the war itself. Even the volunteers carry their own understandings of what the expansive memorial represents.
“To me it’s an installation: a visual representation of the human cost of war,” said April Fitzsimmons, a volunteer who served in the Air Force Intelligence just before the U.S. began Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. “Where the newspaper reports the names, we are trying to show people the size and what it would look like if each of these crosses or crescents or stars of Davids were human beings. I don’t think it’s a protest because people are going to decide, regardless, what they feel about the war.” |  The number of crosses in the sand reflects the number on this sign Photo by Lauren Rigney |
The volunteer group has become more diverse over the years, and now there are high school students and curious beachgoers working alongside Vietnam and Korean War veterans to create the perfectly lined rows of white and red. To set up the memorial, which is carefully taken down at sunset, a handful of veterans arrive at 3 a.m. and lay down lines in the sand with hand-marked tape measures. The rest of the volunteers stumble in around 6:30, just before the sun rises.
Kathy Wasserman is one of the newer volunteers, and though she has no personal connection to any of the fallen troops, she said she made the easy decision to sacrifice her Sundays so she could educate others, particularly younger people, about the importance of peace.
Kathy Wasserman is one of the newer volunteers, and though she has no personal connection to any of the fallen troops, she said she made the easy decision to sacrifice her Sundays so she could educate others, particularly younger people, about the importance of peace.
“It’s education. We’re questioning that maybe there’s a better way of handling things when we don’t agree. I never questioned anything before, I’m 64. We just didn’t question government.”
However visitors of the memorial choose to view it, the memory that Arlington West leaves with people is undeniable. “They look down at the lines and it’s an impression on them,” said Vietnam veteran Michael Lindley. McKeown agreed, “You can’t look at that field and not think about what it means to be at war. This is a visual reminder of what it means for this country to be at war.” To promote Veteran for Peace’s overarching goal of keeping the public educated and informed, booths are set up with free pamphlets and DVDs. Perhaps more invaluable, though, are the veterans themselves who come from different battles but are all here to talk to the visitors, answer questions and just share a conversation. |  Kathy Wasserman pushes a cross into the Santa Monica sand Photo by Rigney |
Lindley shared, “When we tell people one red cross stands for ten white crosses, their jaw drops. They start a conversation with us. They want to know. They want information.”
