{"id":15352,"date":"2016-12-16T07:14:31","date_gmt":"2016-12-16T14:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=15352"},"modified":"2016-12-17T08:24:41","modified_gmt":"2016-12-17T15:24:41","slug":"a-duty-well-done-book-tells-story-of-yellowstone-national-cemetery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/12\/a-duty-well-done-book-tells-story-of-yellowstone-national-cemetery\/","title":{"rendered":"A duty well done: Book tells story of Yellowstone National Cemetery"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"screen-shot-2016-12-15-at-5-05-28-pm\"<\/a>Sentinels: Yellowstone National Cemetery,<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Ed Saunders, self-published, 2016. 128 pages, $17.95.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is difficult not to be impressed with the enthusiasm Ed Saunders shows for his subject, the creation of the Yellowstone National Cemetery in Laurel.<\/p>\n

Saunders, who retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel and lives in Laurel, seems to have approached his task as a duty owed to the veterans who would be buried in the cemetery, and he went at it with a dogged, soldierly thoroughness.<\/p>\n

In a letter he sent along with a review copy of the book, Saunders acknowledged that \u201cGetting people interested in a cemetery is challenging.\u201d He also said that if, after three years of research and writing, his book ends up \u201cone some dusty shelf, then so be it. But I chose not to let a remarkable story pass into history unrecorded.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that the scope of this book is limited and its audience is probably small, but it is a valuable work of local history. From the perspective of someone who has written dozens, maybe hundreds, of stories touching on the history of people, places and events in Montana, I can only say that I wish more subjects had been treated this comprehensively.<\/p>\n

There are some rough patches in this self-published book, and sentences I would have loved to rewrite, but there are fine, moving passages, too, as in this excerpt from the preface:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve hiked the windswept ridges overlooking the Little Bighorn River in Montana, where gallant soldiers of the US Seventh Cavalry and equally courageous warriors of the Plains Indian tribes fought and died for what they believed was right. I\u2019ve walked respectfully the blood-stained World War II beaches of Normandy, and among precision white crosses at the US cemetery overlooking that frightful place. I\u2019ve stood at military attention at the American Cemetery in Hamm, Luxembourg.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy western boots have reverently bent grass at national cemeteries at Gettysburg, Antietam, Alexandria, Fort McPherson, Fort Logan, Black Hills, Crow Agency, and Arlington. My namesake, Edward J. Hoff, a World War II veteran, lies in Fort McPherson National Cemetery, Nebraska, close to his home; that\u2019s where he wanted to be buried, close to his home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>A similar desire\u2014to provide a final resting place close to home for veterans in this area and Eastern Montana in general\u2014motivated Saunders and others to push for the creation of a veterans cemetery in Yellowstone County.<\/p>\n

But before getting to that story, Saunders provides a big-picture history of American military cemeteries, and this might be the most interesting, accessible part of the book for regular readers.<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t have guessed the subject would be as compelling as Saunders makes it.
\nHe tells how the Civil War, which went on far longer and involved far more deaths than almost anyone then could have imagined, led to the creation of the first large-scale, regular military cemeteries.<\/p>\n

Until then, Saunders writes, there was no systematic means of \u201caccounting for, identifying, burying, and recording the graves of the dead from battles of this magnitude.\u201d The War Department ordered commanding generals to establish burial grounds \u201cnear every battlefield,\u201d to erect headboards for the dead and to keep records of burials.<\/p>\n

To tell the complicated story, Saunders draws on dozens of governmental documents\u2014annual reports of the Secretary of War, congressional reports and acts, proclamations, audits and regulations, and the official records of the Civil War, in addition to books, newspaper and magazine articles, manuscripts and numerous interviews.<\/p>\n

It was obviously an obsession for Saunders, though a healthy one. From the Civil War he moves into a discussion of Army burials on the frontier, going into the history of cemeteries at the Little Bighorn Battlefield, Fort Missoula and Fort Phil Kearney in Wyoming, among others.<\/p>\n

Only then does he turn to a chronicle of efforts to establish a veterans cemetery in Yellowstone County. Because our population was too small for the Veterans Administration itself to build a national cemetery, a group of veterans came up with a long-shot idea: to \u201cconstruct, maintain, and operate a county veterans cemetery to national VA standards and then petition the VA to designate the cemetery a national cemetery.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that is what they did. Funding for what would be a $1.7 million cemetery came from a special mill levy approved by Yellowstone County voters in 2006. The cemetery was built on 10 acres just north of the Laurel city cemetery, and the county also bought 37 adjacent acres for eventual expansion.<\/p>\n

Much of the book is devoted to photographs Saunders took of the site, chronicling its transition from open prairie to a beautifully designed cemetery. There are photos from every season and of numerous different occasions, from the groundbreaking and funerals to the dedication and gatherings of dignitaries.<\/p>\n

Saunders also tells the story of the first man to be buried there\u2014World War II veteran Glenn Butz, whose Purple Heart was stolen in a burglary a few years before he died. Another veteran, George Kimmett, gave his own Purple Heart to Butz\u2019s widow at the burial service.<\/p>\n

Largely through the efforts of Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., the VA finally accepted the cemetery\u2014the first-ever county cemetery built to VA standards\u2014and designated it a national cemetery. When the County Commission asked the public for help in naming the cemetery, more than 50 suggestions poured in and the commission ultimately chose the name suggested by Saunders himself\u2014Yellowstone National Cemetery.<\/p>\n

Saunders was a driving force throughout the whole process, but he refers to himself only in passing and makes no effort to take any of the credit. But he deserves our thanks for his work on the cemetery and now for publishing this account of its creation.<\/p>\n

The book is available on Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note<\/strong>: We\u2019ll be running some more reviews in the next week or so, thinking there\u2019s no better time to be talking\u00a0about books than in the weeks before Christmas, especially when the weather makes all of us want to stay inside.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sentinels: Yellowstone National Cemetery,\u00a0by Ed Saunders, self-published, 2016. 128 pages, $17.95. It is difficult not to be impressed with the enthusiasm Ed Saunders shows for his subject, the creation of the Yellowstone National Cemetery in Laurel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[5275,3084,255,1218,5274],"class_list":["post-15352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-ed-saunders","tag-jon-tester","tag-veterans-administration","tag-yellowstone-county-commission","tag-yellowstone-national-cemetery","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}