From Military.com:
“U.S. Army service members
display the American flag at the grave of World War II veteran Arthur Lewis.”
(U.S. Army service members
assigned to Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) display the
American flag at the grave of World War II veteran Arthur Lewis during a burial
honors ceremony at the New European Cemetery in Djibouti City, Djibouti, Oct.
28, 2021. The cemetery is the final resting place for World War II veteran
Arthur Lewis, who died in 1959 while at sea aboard the S.S. Steel Vendor in the
Gulf of Tadjoura. Due to the nature and location of his death, the U.S.
Merchant Marine was buried in Djibouti without rightfully earned military
honors. CJTF-HOA, in coordination with Djiboutian leadership, cleaned up the
cemetery, installed the new headstone to identify his grave and conducted a
dedication ceremony complete with military honors.)
Nathan Reynolds’ passion for
replacing U.S. military veterans’ broken or missing headstones took him to a
little-known graveyard for foreigners in the Horn of Africa. Without Reynolds,
a 40-year-old Army veteran deployed to Camp Lemonnier with the Defense
Logistics Agency, World War II veteran Arthur R. Lewis would likely still be
buried in an unmarked grave covered in broken bits of coral at the New European
Cemetery in Djibouti city. “This is definitely the hardest one I’ve ever done,”
Reynolds, an Ohio native, said of his work to help the Lewis family get a
Department of Veterans Affairs headstone placed at Lewis’ grave.
Lewis, a Massachusetts native,
had served as a radioman in the Coast Guard in the 1920s, then on a Liberty
ship for several years with the Merchant Marine during WWII. He was working
aboard the S.S. Steel Vendor, a former troop transport that had become a cargo
ship after the war, when he died at sea in 1959 while transiting from a Red Sea
port to Djibouti city. At the time, Djibouti was still known as French
Somaliland. The humble gravestone was all the family expected, said Chaplain
James Parnell, an Army major who helped Reynolds. But the deployed Americans
didn’t stop there. “We were like, ‘We gotta do more than that,’” said Maj. Jay
Cavaiola, of the 404th Civil Affairs Battalion, who joined the effort in June.
On Thursday, American and foreign
dignitaries and service members from several countries gathered in the baking
sun to render Lewis his long-overdue military honors. Presiding over the event
were the U.S. ambassador, the two-star Army commander of the U.S.-led military
task force in the region and the Navy captain who oversees nearby Camp Lemonnier,
the only permanent U.S. base on the continent. Guests included the Djiboutian
defense minister and senior military officers of that country as well as
counterparts from France and Canada. Lewis’ family, who regretted they could
not attend the ceremony, were “blown away” by the honor shown their father,
Parnell said. It was an opportunity to recognize not only Lewis’ life and
wartime service but also the long-standing partnerships between the U.S., its
Djiboutian hosts and their allies, said Maj. Gen. William Zana, commander of
the combined joint task force. French, British, Australian and Canadian service
members are also interred at the cemetery.
Reynolds called it fortuitous
that he was among the 5,000 troops, civilians and contractors deployed last
year to Camp Lemonnier, a few miles from where Lewis was laid to rest. A
frequent contributor to the website Findagrave.com, Reynolds gets notifications
via the website’s app of requests for gravesite photos. That’s how he learned
that Lewis’ daughter, a Washington state resident, was seeking a photo of her
father’s grave. She’d uploaded a black-and-white photo of a flag-draped casket
taken before it was lowered into the grave. But despite scouring the cemetery,
Reynolds could not find the burial plot. He offered to send Lewis’ daughter
information on how to ask the U.S. Embassy to place a marker. She told him
she’d been trying since 2011 to get U.S. officials to help her do just that,
but kept running into roadblocks, Reynolds told Stars and Stripes this week. “That
actually hacked me off,” he said. “I was like, ‘no, no, no, this needs to be
done.’” Staff Sgt. Rolland Cheng of the 443rd Civil Affairs Battalion offered
to help find the grave and get it marked. He and Reynolds eventually recruited
Army chaplains and a French liaison officer. They handed off the project to other
civil affairs soldiers when they rotated back to the U.S. last spring.
The biggest challenge was driving
around town and knocking on doors looking for the right people to help them,
said Cavaiola, the major from the 404th Civil Affairs Battalion. Americans met
with the city’s mayor, the national coroner-mortician and a local bishop. After
locating the burial plot, they helped the family purchase it in perpetuity,
which is uncommon in Djibouti, Cavaiola said. Back in Ohio, Reynolds filed the
request with Veterans Affairs for the stone, approved by the family.” The VA
was a little confused,” Reynolds said. “I don’t think they get many requests
for places like that.” Earlier this year, the Defense Logistics Agency
warehouse at Camp Lemonnier received the 240-pound slab of granite. Members of
the Army’s 377th Engineer Vertical Construction Company installed it earlier
this month. Parnell, the chaplain, said it hadn’t been “anybody’s mission” but
rather something they did out of a sense of duty. One last thing remained after
Thursday’s ceremony: flying the neatly folded U.S. flag and other mementos back
to the U.S. for handover to the Lewis family. Parnell said he’d personally make
the 8,000-mile trip if necessary.
^ It’s important for the United
States (Politicians, the Military and Ordinary Americans) to honor and remember
every American Man and Woman who fought and died for our country regardless of
where they are/ ^
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