Unlike former President Donald Trump, I was at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial for the centennial of the World War I armistice. Trump missed an extraordinary event, the kind that happens only once in a lifetime.
Trump's reported disdain for military veterans and those killed in action is in the news again after his former chief of staff John Kelly confirmed earlier reporting by saying Trump "rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France."
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At the 2018 ceremony that Trump skipped, the cemetery director presented a family with the identity discs of their Australian MIA ancestor. The tags had been lost in the French fields for over 100 years.
The cemetery is in northeastern France; it’s potato farming country. In the late fall, farmers have harvested potatoes and are tilling the fields for next year. A farmer had unearthed the tags only a few weeks before Nov. 11.
The VIP visit attended by Kelly, which Trump skipped, was on Nov. 10, the day before the centennial. But I don’t think missing out on the VIP event mattered to our small group who gathered for the public event on Nov. 11. Rather, we gathered to pay our own respects to the men who had died on behalf of America.
When the director spoke of the identity disc discovery to us, I felt a sense of electricity among us in the cemetery chapel. The silence was profound.
That weekend was very foggy, and the decision not to fly the presidential helicopter to the site was sensible. However, the location is 60 miles east of Paris, easily reached by a swift motorcade on the autoroute.
The site is of special importance to the U.S. Marine Corps. In the adjacent Belleau Wood, the Marines suffered their greatest casualties (to that date) in June 1918. In recent times, Marines flying west to America from duty stations in the Middle East have been known to arrange a stopover in Paris in order to visit Belleau Wood. Some have camped overnight in the woods, something akin to a spiritual encounter.
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For members of the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division (which included my father), Aisne-Marne also is special. The 3rd Division made its reputation there, dubbed by the French as "The Rock of the Marne" for their steadfastness in repelling repeated German attacks. Their motto is from a command shouted (in French) by a 3rd Division general to the French troops holding the line: “Nous resterons la!” (We will stay there!).
Thus, for then-President Trump, his cemetery snub was a trifecta event. He disrespected the Australian Army, the U.S. Marine Corps, and the U.S. Army. No wonder Kelly was shocked.
Joanne Butler was formerly professional staff for the House Ways and Means Committee, an analyst and speechwriter at the Department of Labor during the George W. Bush administration, and a member of Longwood University's Board of Visitors.