Memorial Day: Honoring the 400,000 People Buried at Arlington National Cemetery

There are more than 400,000 graves in Arlington National Cemetery. Every single one of them gets an American flag on Memorial Day. Each flag is placed exactly one shoe length in front of the headstone.

“Flags-in” is one of the solemn duties of the Army’s official Honor Guard, the 3d infantry division, based at the nearby Joint Base Myer–Henderson Hall. On the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend, more than a thousand soldiers spent hours under the hot sun in their fatigues, carrying heavy bags full of flags across the vast expanse of the 624-acre cemetery.

The unit is called the Old Guard, but its members are young. They say the experience of planting flags for the fallen is an honor. Humbling. Fulfilling.

“It’s an honor for every soldier here to be able to give back to these servicemembers that came before us that have done so much for this country,” said Capt. Jonathan Cohen of Chicago.

Capt. Cohen said he’s keeping Stephen “Chase” Prasnicki in his heart this Memorial Day. Prasnicki was killed by an IED in Afghanistan a few years ago at the age of 24. “He was a good man,” Cohen said. “He’s not buried at Arlington, but he was a good friend of all the people who played football with him and went to school with him” at West Point.

Many of the soldiers come from military families, often inspired to join the Army by seeing the service of their relatives.

Sgt. Brittany Sylvester-Rivera’s grandfather was in the Air Force for about five years during the Vietnam War, and her aunt just retired from the Army after 22 years of service. “I’ve been wanting to be in the military since I was 11 years old,” Sylvester-Rivera said.

This Memorial Day, she’s remembering several of her leaders from Fort Bragg who have died, including two who took their own lives after they were no longer in the Army and one who died of cancer. The Armed Forces lose more veterans to suicide than they lose active duty members in combat – an estimated 22 a day.

Staff Sgt. Marisol Riley got emotional when asked about her own losses. She said she's thinking about her platoon sergeant, buried in Arlington's Section 60, along with more than 800 others who died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not everyone gets to spend Memorial Day at Arlington Cemetery, but Riley says remembering those that have passed doesn’t have to involve all the pomp and circumstance of an Arlington ceremony. “It’s as easy as just taking a moment to remember them and honor them,” Riley said. “Just celebrating the life that they lived.”

She says her military service has changed her.

“It’s made me more humble and more appreciative,” Riley said. “We have veterans that are only 18 years old that are buried here. It really humbles you.”