Fences are erected for many different purposes. To keep things in. To keep things out. Or as decorations, the classic white picket fence. In Jacksonville, North Carolina is a security chain link fence that runs about 5 miles along highway NC 24 surrounding the living quarters for families of Marines stationed at Marine Corps Training Base Camp LeJeune. The fence was erected post 9/11 along with many other security upgrades to the base including new fencing or adding more security access points or blocking or removing of other access points all together. The Second Marine Division is stationed here and the base main gate acts as one of the two revolving doors for Marines going and coming to Iraq from the US. The other revolving door being Camp Pendleton outside of San Diego, California, where the First Marine Division is based.
As I look down the road for several miles I am struck by the sight of bed sheets and tarpaulins with personal messages of welcomes and good byes and good wishes and announcements of births written, painted and imprinted hanging on the chain link security fence. These messages are from wives, husbands, sons, daughters, mothers and fathers, friends and total strangers. Some look like they have been here for a while, others look like they have just been put up. But every one prepared and installed with loving care. They go on and on and on for literally miles, the entire length of the security fence along NC 24 from the New River Bridge at the main gate down to the small community of Hubert. Even in the areas where the woods come up to the road, these messages of love and admiration are lined up side-by-side with hardly any open space anywhere along the fence.
To many the War in Iraq is only something that is on television that the politicians fight over or something you hear about from friends who have loved ones there. But to ride down the road at 55 miles per hour and see this sight that goes on for miles and know the reason for the fence wasn’t to be a billboard of wishes but to protect American’s from people who want to kill us and to know that the names on these makeshift placards are people who are fighting and in some cases dying for us, the heavy reality of what we are in hits home. The thought does cross my mind how many of these names belong to men and women who did not be come home? Or more importantly, will not be coming home. Names with messages of happy expression of good wishes that might never see them, turning into messages of lost hope.
Before I know it I am past the line of names and wishes on the fence and I realize I have to blog about this and I have missed the opportunity to take a picture of this moving sight. No time to turn around now to snap a picture. The sun is setting and we are running late. Then I realize there is no great haste to catch a picture. I am sure this sight will be here the next time we come by and I will be looking to see how many names are there from this trip and to see how many new names are added.
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