"Those in Peril on the Sea"

by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

Many of you have heard me speak about Eben Bradbury, a young Marine from Newburyport killed in World War One. He is in my thoughts every day, but especially during this time of year. The birthday of the Marine Corps is November 10, Veterans Day November 11, Eben’s birthday November 12.

Eben Bradbury, killed in World War I, is memorialized on this boulder on the Bartlet Mall in Newburyport, but buried in France. Image courtesy of Cynthia August.

This year, I spent a day with our Allies. For the second year in a row, I joined a group organized by the British and Commonwealth Remembrance Project to honor the British and Commonwealth soldiers, sailors, and airmen buried in New England. Specifically, we went to visit the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Cemetery.

The poppy is an important symbol of remembrance, particularly in Europe.

I came to this event through a circuitous route. An English friend of mine invited me to attend and then was unable to go herself. I went along anyway. As I claim a certain amount of Canadian identity, having spent my childhood in British Columbia, Ontario, and Manitoba, I was adopted by this crew of ex-pats and pay particular attention to the Commonwealth citizens buried there – the Australians, New Zealanders, and yes, Canadians. It helps that my longtime friend Adam, whose association with the British Royal Navy goes back decades, is also part of this group. It also helps that I know all the words to God Save the Queen, although now we must sing God Save the King, which I will admit was a shock when the word first passed my lips.

We met in a parking lot in Kittery, Maine. We had already passed a background check. We were loaded into an unmarked van and driven on to the Portsmouth Naval Base. Our IDs were taken away, then handed back after we were through the checkpoint. We were reminded not to take pictures of the base as we passed through. This is not an easy cemetery to visit.

A New Zealand flag flies behind the stone of John David Wallace, a member of the Royal New Zealand Naval Volunteer Reserve, who died in 1943, age 21.

The cemetery is small and quiet, a few stones on a hill above the river. The stones are from a variety of time periods, and most of them are American. There was one section, however, where most of the stones look the same - concrete blocks with metal plaques affixed to them. Each stone is a memorial to a young man that died in World War II, and many of these are British and Commonwealth citizens.

It was a beautiful day, the last of the leaves still clinging to the trees and casting an orange and yellow glow. The weather was too warm for the coats we all wore, and I watched as one person after another carefully removed their poppy pin from their coat and then carefully re-pinned it to their shirt. We weren't exactly joyful, but we weren't somber either. Some members of the group were old friends, some went directly to the stone of someone they had researched or were connected with in some other way. It felt like a kind of reunion.

There was a short service, a song, a prayer. And then, a moment of silence, and that was when, in the playful light of late fall in New England, we brought the young men buried here, many of them just teenagers, into full consciousness. The silence was broken by a bugle playing the Last Post, and then we all took poppies and placed them on the graves, taking time to think of each one. The youngest I could find was sixteen – the oldest forty-five. Some were lost at sea and washed ashore, others were killed in training exercises or while defending the coast. All are here, on our soil, forever, so far from home, in a place that is hidden away and hard to visit. I was so grateful to the group that organized the trip and thought of the sons and daughters of Old Newbury buried abroad. Of course, I always think of Eben in France, unvisited for so long, but now remembered by so many.

Most societies have established rituals for remembering those long dead. We Americans seem to be a people of relentless motion, of expansion and forward propulsion. I often think of what is lost in this desire to leave the past behind – whether we can still believe as we once did that we would carry on into the future. The residents of Old Newbury burying grounds centuries ago had good reason to believe that their grave had something to offer the living. They offered advice to their descendants, reprimanded the frivolous and admonished the sinner. Later, they planned garden cemeteries like Oak Hill – public parks to lure in the public, to be remembered by picnickers and dog walkers. They speak to the primal hope that they will be remembered, propelled into the future with a plaintive “remember me as you walk by”.

The graves of Danish and British sailors from the freighter Empire Knight.

Tonight, I am thinking of a row of graves across a gravel path from the main graveyard, marked with concrete stones with names like Jens George Dahl and Leonard Johanis Hansen. These men were the crew of the Empire Knight, a 7244-ton British ship that went down off the coast of Maine on February 11, 1944. Twenty sailors were rescued. Twenty-four were killed. Sixteen are buried at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Many of the crew of the Empire Knight were from Denmark. When the Nazis occupied their country, many Danes who were at sea chose to join the British Navy rather than sail home and live under Nazi rule. They were fighting for the freedom of their occupied homeland when they died, and it seems doubly tragic that they were fated never to return, even in death.

Sonar has captured the wreck of the Empire Knight on Boon Island Ledge, Maine.

In America, Veterans Day is for the living, for those who served the country in war and peace, at home and abroad. Remembering the dead is not enough, but it is how I honor the living. I will never forget that it was a living Navy veteran of the Korean War who put Eben Bradbury’s medal in my hand and sent me on this path.

But tonight, I will think of the brave Danes who met their death fighting fascism. And I will add them to the young men and women who I hold in my memory, and in my heart.