Helmet on Grave?

[Luxembourg]

Hello, I recently found this picture in the web.

Someone told me that it´s no problem to put an helmet on a grave but it isn´t allowed to lay the us flag on the ground.

What are your opinions about the helmet on the grave? Good or disrespectful?

I´m looking forward to your answers!

 

Greetings

[Bugme]

Flag on the ground is a great breach of US flag etiquette. Not being an American, I'm sure you didn't realize this.

[Rakkasan187]

In regards to the helmet, I guess it is not much different than someone leaving a medal or something else at the foot of the grave. You see this on a daily basis at the Vietnam Wall memorial in Washington, D.C. HOWEVER, and this is a big one... The US Flag on the ground is a big time No No. That is disrespecful and against US flag codes. If the director of the cemetery would have seen this, I am sure they would have spoken to the individual and had them remove the flag from the ground, as well as the helmet on the cross.

 

It is a matter of opinion, and I am sure that whoever took the picture had all good intentions, but and I am guessing here, that the person was not American, and they did not know the regulations pertaining to the US Flag. With that said, a lot of American's still disrespect Old Glory..

 

Also prior to taking any type of photo like this, I would have asked permission from the director of the cemetery to see if it would be appropriate.

 

Just my 02 cents.

 

Leigh

[Luxembourg]

Flag on the ground is a great breach of US flag etiquette. Not being an American, I'm sure you didn't realize this.

 

That´s what I said?

[Bugme]

From USFlag.org: When the flag is lowered, no part of it should touch the ground or any other object; it should be received by waiting hands and arms. To store the flag it should be folded neatly and ceremoniously

 

Here's the whole website: http://www.usflag.org/flagetiquette.html

[hawkdriver]

By our flag etiquette, that flag must now be burnt. Helmet looks nice on that cross though.

[Bugme]

 

That´s what I said?

 

My apologies, I misread your post. As for the helmet, I see no disrespect in having it put there for a photograph.

[Sabrejet]

When I visited the cemetery at St Laurent I took some miniature US flags on sticks and planted them in the ground at the base of various crosses. This seems to be accepted practice as there were also many others dotted about the place...plus small floral tributes tied with r/w/b ribbon. In this respect I think "less" is "more".

[uplandmod]

Looks like somebody meant to take an artistic and respectful picture but didn't realized they were crossing the line when it came to flag etiquette. Looks like they had the best intentions but got caught up in the spirit of the photograph.

 

I made a similar mistake, although not as bad as this, when I was younger when I did my first display.

 

Hopefully they learned their lesson with this.

Cemeteries and Memorials are very solemn places that need to follow guidelines for the proper respect of those who passed.

 

Leonardo

[strawberry 9]

The whole thing kind of rubs me the wrong way to be honest. Seeing that this is a 101st/506th Reg. helmet, my guess is the photographer was on a "Band of Brothers" kick and the actual grave was being used as a prop. I can imagine how I would feel is someone was using one of my loved one's grave for a photo shoot. I can't make out the name on the cross so maybe there is an actual connection to the helmet and the soldier. I would hope so.

[uplandmod]

I agree, unfortunately we don't know what was in the mind of the photographer.

 

Was he just using it as a prop to show off his Top Pots helmet and how cool it is that he made it to Normandy?

 

Was he somebody who he's related to who died in the war and this is the first time he's visiting the grave?

 

We honestly really don't know but the first one is a crass, the other I would be a bit lenient to.

 

Leonardo

[doyler]

The whole thing kind of rubs me the wrong way to be honest. Seeing that this is a 101st/506th Reg. helmet, my guess is the photographer was on a "Band of Brothers" kick and the actual grave was being used as a prop. I can imagine how I would feel is someone was using one of my loved one's grave for a photo shoot. I can't make out the name on the cross so maybe there is an actual connection to the helmet and the soldier. I would hope so.

 

Looking at this from another perspective.............

 

Possible the person involved also is a care taker of the grave.Not uncommon for people from Europe to adopt a veterans grave from what I have encountered.Many who really do have an appreciation for the sacrifaces made by these men often adopt a veteran and are the only ones who will visit the grave,place flowers or other tributes to this hero who died while fighting in their country.Im not going to really speculate either way about the intent of the person and the flag issue has been addressed.Just saying there is always two sides to every story(or picture in this case).

[Luxembourg]

For all your questions here is the link with the history behind the picture:

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/newton/articles/2009/12/17/newton_man_dutch_man_pair_up_to_piece_together_life_of_fallen_wwii_soldier/

 

Thanks for your replies!

 

Greetings

[doyler]

Here is a copy of the article if you dont want to visit the link.

 

 

Until recently, the good fortune enjoyed by Gerald Goolkasian seemed to cast a withering shadow over the lives of his fallen World War II buddies - guys like Glenn E. Hamlin, a 20-year-old paratrooper who died months before Goolkasian was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge.

 

 

 

Equals in boot camp and on the battlefield, the two soldiers reaped vastly different rewards.

 

After the war, Goolkasian married and had seven children, settling in Newtonville. People hailed his wartime service.

 

With each passing year, Hamlin’s life, frozen in time, fell deeper and deeper into obscurity.

 

“He was so young. The only thing he got to do was get killed in a combat action,’’ said Goolkasian, 88. “He never got to have kids or a family.’’

 

Halfway around the world, a 26-year-old Dutch truck driver wrestled with similar thoughts.

 

Tim Sloots had been carrying around a battered World War II combat helmet for more than a decade, all the time searching for the story behind its original owner: an American paratrooper named Glenn E. Hamlin.

 

“It was really like a member of the family, that helmet,’’ said Sloots, an amateur World War II historian and collector. “I bought it from a military junk shop when I was 16, and I always wanted to know who it belonged to. I talked about it all the time. My friends and my family, they knew I was always looking. Who was Glenn E. Hamlin?’’

 

This spring, his search led Sloots to Goolkasian, and the three stories converged. Sloots got some answers, Goolkasian some comfort. And Hamlin got something the war had denied him: a namesake.

 

Glenn Harm René Sloots was born Nov. 10. Chubby. Smiling. “And a very easy boy,’’ said Sloots.

 

Naming his firstborn child after a long-dead American soldier was not a snap decision, Sloots said.

 

He and the baby’s mother, Yolanda Sempel, discussed their choices extensively in the months preceding the birth. Glenn was a beautiful name, they agreed, and it flowed well with the surname. But in the end, it was an almost familial connection that Sloots felt for Hamlin that made the difference. There could be no other name for this child.

 

“My grandparents were in the Resistance, and they told me many stories about the American soldiers who came to liberate our country,’’ Sloots said.

 

“If it weren’t for that liberation, I would be speaking German right now.’’

 

For months, the two men traded e-mails to patch together the details of Hamlin’s short life. Unfortunately, there was little to be told. Goolkasian turned up a photograph, which now hangs in Sloots’ living room. And he told Sloots that Hamlin was from New Jersey.

 

“I felt bad because there was a lot I couldn’t tell him,’’ Goolkasian said. “We were always so busy in boot camp that once we were done each day, we were done. Not a lot of time for talk, but we had some times.’’

 

In separate interviews, Sloots and Goolkasian each laughed about an impromptu swimming lesson that Hamlin had given his buddy during that boot camp more than 65 years ago.

 

 

 

It was as though all three of them had experienced it:

 

“Glenn and another guy, Bill McGonagle, decided they were going to teach me to swim during boot camp, so they took me to a river and threw me in,’’ said Goolkasian. “I got across the first two times OK, but on the third or fourth cross, they had to jump in and get me.’’

 

Everyone who knows Goolkasian was touched when Glenn Harm René Sloots was born - particularly when the new father sent photos of the little guy nestled in his namesake’s helmet.

 

Within days, Goolkasian’s adult daughter, Barbara Keane, began stitching together a special baby quilt, using fabric that had photographic images of both the newborn and Hamlin.

 

“I put the date on the quilt,’’ said Keane, a nurse. “I thought it was great because he was born the day before Veterans Day.’’

 

Though Goolkasian and Sloots have never met, and have only spoken by phone once, they sound like old buddies on the subject of Glenn Hamlin.

 

“I jumped circles in the air when Mr. Goolkasian told me about Glenn. It gives me goose bumps to hear the stories, and to see the picture that he sent,’’ Sloots said in a phone interview.

 

“He told me Glenn was a very nice, a warm person. A good friend when a man has to be a good friend.’’

 

Goolkasian echoes Sloots in discussing their relationship.

 

“In his letter to me, Tim said something like, ‘It was wonderful that a mother and father would send their son here and he gave his life to free our country.’ That touched me.’’

 

Goolkasian does not like to talk about his own sacrifices, but they were hardly minor.

 

A strapping young man when he was drafted, he lost one of his fingers, the use of his left arm, and all of the feeling in his right foot when he was ambushed in the Belgian village of Noville on Dec. 20, 1944. He spent the next 33 months learning how to walk again.

 

He’s been pulling shrapnel out of his body for decades.

 

“What can I say? I survived. I came back,’’ said Goolkasian, who launched a successful career as an insurance salesman. “I’ve had a good life. A lot of guys didn’t live long enough to get a driver’s license. They’re the heroes.’’

 

Goolkasian takes comfort in knowing that Sloots has pulled together a dossier on one of those heroes. Previously, he had known that Hamlin died in Holland, “sometime after D-Day.’’ Through Sloots he discovered that Hamlin’s final battle was Operation Market Garden, on Oct. 7, 1944. Hamlin was one of just 26 soldiers in the C Company, First Battalion, 506th PIR who were sent against a German stronghold in the woods of Opheusden, Holland.

 

Hamlin was buried in a temporary cemetery near Nijmegen. Later he was moved to Margraten, an American military cemetery.

 

“It made him come alive for me again, and it gave me closure,’’ said Goolkasian.

 

“After boot camp, we didn’t see each other. He was a paratrooper. I was a tank driver. I had one letter from him after his first jump - paratroopers had to do five jumps to get certified - and he said he liked it. That was the last I heard from him.

 

“Now, I can die knowing when poor Glenn got killed.’’

 

Gerald Goolkasian is working on his wartime memoirs.

[LtRGFRANK]

I will forgive the flag on the ground. What a story. Robert

[Jeeper704]

No matter what the story is, you should have respect for the flag (and this comes from a non-US citizen).

And he could have put the helmet next to the headstone.

These headstones are no Christmas trees, ok?

To me this is lack of respect, no matter what excuses are given.

I can't believe there are people here who have no problems with this.

Cemeteries are places of respect and remembrance.

If you want to decorate something, buy a bloody Christmas tree!

 

Erwin

[kammo-man]

what about the famous photograph of the Rangers flag laying on the ground on Point du HOC .