Edward Achorn

I rode my bike Sunday afternoon, August 29, 2010, out to Latham Park in Barrington, Rhode Island, five minutes from home, to watch the fabulously expensive yachts and lesser stinkpots pour in and out of the marina-lined cove to sparkling Narrangsett Bay. It was a beautiful sight on a hot, breezy late summer afternoon under a bright sun and deep blue skies.

On the way back, I decided to stop by a lonely little cemetery — a stone’s throw from my new home, but one I had never investigated. It is quiet little place — mostly sunburned grass, with about two dozen graves tucked up a slight incline, away from the corner of Adams and Bay Spring Avenues. Gnarly trees have grown up through some of the plots, providing their graves some shade, the people buried there long forgotten.

I stopped at one grave adorned with a small American flag, and read the inscription etched into the gray granite, still readable:

“In Memory of Benjamin, Son of Mr. John Medbery, & Anna his Wife, who Fell in the Battle on Rhode Island, August 29, 1778, Bravely Fighting for the Liberty of his Countery [sic], aged 19 Years, 4 Months and 27 Days.”

This boy had fallen in the Revolutionary War, 232 years ago that very day, perhaps that very hour. It was pure happenstance that I had been led to his grave on such a solemn anniversary — or was it?

I said a silent prayer for him, thanked him for what he had done, thought of the millions of boys like Benjamin who, in suffering much and, in the worst extremity, giving their lives, secured the freedom that my children and I get to enjoy. Every day, while he sleeps.

The only fitting memorial for these poor young men killed in the madness of battle is to fight peacefully, tirelessly, to preserve the freedom they secured for us, and to strive to keep more such lives from being sacrificed in war.