In memorium

I’m now in my second capital city of this trip – Washington DC, home of good old George W Bush. This fine, orderly city is also the temporary home of Thomas SC Crawford (aka Tbol, The B*llock, Seedy Crawsort etc). Tom, as most choose to name him, is one of the York crew who has recently emigrated out here to be near his lovely lady Alissa. He’s actually gonna be living in Philadelphia just up the road, but for the time being he’s a resident of Alissa’s family home in a lovely leafy part of DC. I was so pleased to see Tom (and George) that I had to give them both a hug.



I haven’t got much time here just now (I’m coming back here at the end of the month for Thanksgiving) but yesterday we managed to squeeze in some sightseeing. We checked out the White House, despite being told off by a couple of uniformed folk for straying into an excluded zone. Its much bigger than I realised, but in essence is exactly what it says on the tin – a white house. Just around the corner from George’s pad are a number of memorials. This is the area of the capital made famous in films like Forrest Gump, with the Lincoln Memorial at one end of a huge mall that stretches all the way to Capitol Hill, via the big rectangular lake and the mighty obelisk in the centre of the mall. I think this is where the anti-Vietnam million man march took place. We went to the Lincoln Memorial and admired Abe sat imperiously on his oversized chair. Unfortunately he was surrounded by a cage of scaffold which spoilt the effect a little. Tom excelled himself by copying a little boy and sliding down a marble slope that forms part of the memorial. Not quite the poignant reflection that is intended, but it was very funny and I managed to capture it on film.

Before the Lincoln memorial, we’d taken in two more memorials dedicated to the fallen many of previous wars. They couldn’t have been more contrasting. The recently opened WW2 memorial is a bold granite and water feature monument that seems to have been designed to reflect the epic sweep of this conflict and the innumerable lives lost. The nearby Vietnam War memorial is a much lower key affair, which is subtle enough to capture the sense of regret associated with the messy conflict, while paying due respect and honour to all the slain soldiers. I liked them both, but I think the Vietnam monument has been more sensitively designed and constructed in a way that reminded of me of the extremely moving Holocaust memorial in the centre of Berlin.

The names of every man and woman who died in Vietnam between 1959 and 1972 are inscribed on the face of the memorial. To help visitors locate their departed family, friends and comrades, an indexing book is provided that lists all the remembered by surname. We decided to see if anyone with our names was commemorated on the memorial. There were a page of Crawfords and numerous Crouses (Alissa’s surname) but to my huge surprise there were also four Holms. I looked a little closer and saw that one of them was Private (First Class) Alan Holm. How unusual. Never before have I encountered someone who shares my name. I continued to study the detail on Pte Holm’s entry. Date of birth 20th July 1949 – just 3 days off being born 30 years to the day before me. This was too spooky. I instantly felt a peculiar bond with my namesake and after noting the year of his death (1972 – the final year of the war – he was just 23) I went on a mission to find his name on the memorial. He was one of the last names on the list, evidently being unlucky enough to have perished as the messy affair was in its closing stages. I decided I will look into this guy on the internet and see if I can find any more info about him – my long lost former self.

As if that whole experience wasn’t strange enough, the day also included a highly surreal episode that involved Tom freeing a demented squirrel that had become trapped in a rubbish bin. Now that doesn’t happen every day. Not to me anyway.

Hasta la vista.