Cardboard tombstones, embroidered cloths and anti-war signs decorated Northwest Eighth Avenue on Memorial Day as Gainesville's chapter of Veterans for Peace honored the lives of service men and women who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001.
A display of 5,473 cardboard tombstones, one for every soldier killed in the wars, lined both sides of Northwest Eighth Avenue on Monday. Visitors and volunteers placed flags on the tombstones of soldiers they knew personally. This year, members of Veterans for Peace, a national organization that opposes war as a legitimate means of conflict resolution, and volunteers from their sister group, CodePink, had to plant some tombstones alongside the north side of the road because there was no more room on the south side.
Scott Camil, who is the coordinator for the Gainesville chapter, said this was the fourth year that the group has set up the memorial and doesn't know what they'll do if they run out of space in the future.
"You'd think it wouldn't come to that," he said, "that we would realize before then that this [war] is not working."
Camil said the group received mostly support from passers-by, but he was upset after he learned that about 100 tombstones had been dug out early Sunday morning and were thrown into the woods.
Volunteers did not see those who removed the tombstones, he said.
Veterans for Peace member Denny Bellesheim, who served two years in North Korea from 1966 to 1968, said he worries about what kind of world his grandchildren will inherit.
"I don't understand why we kill a million innocent people to catch a handful of bad guys," he said. "How much sense does that make?"
The memorial also displayed the Peace Ribbon, a banner of more than 50 handmade cloth panels embroidered with names of military and civilian casualties of the Iraq war. The ribbon's images included weeping families and warheads falling on Noah's Ark. The ribbon travels nationwide and is maintained by CodePink.
