‘It’s overwhelming’: Soldiers honor fallen heroes at Arlington’s Memorial Day ‘Flags In’ tradition

Army 1st Sgt. Brian Junga was at Arlington National Cemetery late Wednesday evening.

Without hesitation, he returned early Thursday morning to join other soldiers in an emotional Memorial Day tradition: placing flags at the gravesites of the more than 260,000 U.S. service members buried there.

“These are my brothers and sisters, whether I know them or not, or whether I served with them or not,” Sgt. Junga said. “If we have to be here at 3 a.m. and do it with only three hours of sleep, we’re going to do this. It means that much to us.”

Sgt. Junga served tours of duty in Afghanistan with the 10th Mountain Division. A distant relative is buried at Arlington, but he said none of the soldiers he served with in Afghanistan was laid to rest there. He said friends outside Washington asked him to place an American flag on the graves of people they knew.

“I was here last night going around placing flags, taking a picture and sending it to my friends,” he told The Washington Times. “To me, it feels like I’m an extension of them. It still means a lot.”

On Memorial Day, each gravesite will have a small American flag carefully positioned exactly one boot’s length away from the headstone. The flags were placed by 1,500 soldiers from the Army’s 3rd Infantry Regiment, better known as The Old Guard.

The regiment has carried out the tradition, known as “Flags In,” just before Memorial Day every year since 1948, when it was designated as the Army’s official ceremonial unit.

Early Thursday, soldiers in camouflage moved up the rolling hills at Arlington like skirmishers preparing to attack an enemy position. Their rucksacks, however, were stuffed with American flags rather than machine gun ammunition. They stopped at each tombstone, measured the distance with their combat boots and inserted the flag into the earth.

After that, they moved on to the next headstone, the next row and then the next section of the vast cemetery.

Staff Sgt. Christopher Anderson was among those placing the flags. He was seriously wounded in April 2012 when an improvised explosive device detonated near him four months after he arrived in Afghanistan as a young soldier with the 2nd Infantry Division. Walking among the headstones at Arlington and reading the names of the fallen soldiers is always a sobering experience, he said.

“I sacrificed a limb, but they made the ultimate sacrifice. There is a lot to take in here,” he said.

Staff Sgt. James Francis Moriarty’s grave is in Section 60, the part of Arlington National Cemetery where many military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried. His headstone identifies him as a weapons sergeant in the 5th Special Forces Group. The young Green Beret was killed in Jordan in November 2016 while training Syrian fighters.

Memorial Day has taken on a whole new meaning for his family, Sgt. Moriarty’s sister Rebecca Moriarty Davis said in a telephone interview. Although the family is from Texas, Ms. Davis now lives in Alexandria so she can visit her brother regularly.

“It’s really hard right now, but I’ve always found that Arlington is a really special place for him to be buried,” Ms. Davis said. “My brother was the person I loved most on this planet. When he died, a piece of me died with him.”

She said that the Old Guard’s mission shows the deep meaning of Memorial Day.

“When people say, ‘Happy Memorial Day,’ and then there are all the Memorial Day sales, that really kind of always irked me because I like to think of it as a day of remembrance,” Ms. Davis said.

She said Jimmy, as her family called him, would not want his friends and loved ones to be glum on Memorial Day weekend.

“He would love that people are barbecuing. He’d be right there next to them having a beer,” Ms. Davis said.

Staff Sgt. Ariel Levaula has been in the Army for a decade and joined The Old Guard in January. This was her first opportunity to participate in the “Flags In” mission.

“I’ve always watched it on TV, all the ceremonies, but to be here right now and experience it is overwhelming,” she said. “Every time we put down a flag on these tombstones, we now have a personal connection with them. We’re able to experience their history.”

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dominated the Army for more than 20 years. Sgt. Junga enlisted soon after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Many of the younger soldiers in The Old Guard joined the Army long after the 9/11 attacks.

“I’ve been in war for the entire 19 years I’ve been in the Army, but they’ve never experienced that. They don’t understand the mindset that any second the phone could ring and you’re going overseas,” he said. “But for the ‘Old Heads,’ the ones who have been downrange, it has a different meaning.”