Dear journal,

Today mommy asked me to blog about something we've done between the time of our arrival in Washington D.C. and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This is a particularly hard task as we have done so much. We've walked the streets of the U.S. capital touring the Smithsonian (the world's largest museum and research center) and monuments to presidents, had numerous campfires, seen parades, and driven around battlefields of the Civil War. While all of these things have made an impression on me and I have learned much because of them, the things that stood out to me the most were the Civil War battlefields.

The Civil War, which started in the year 1861 and ended four years later in 1865, was the bloodiest, deadliest war that happened in American history. More than 600,000 American soldiers died in the Civil War, resulting in more American deaths than the American Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Korean War, the Vietnam Conflict, World War I, and World War II combined! Just the enormity of the number of dead, was enough to leave me speechless.

Over the last few days, we visited two of the battlefields of the Civil War; one in Antietam, Maryland, and the other in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. They were both the bloodiest battles of the war. We walked and drove along some of the same paths and fields that the soldiers fought across, sometimes at canon-firing range, sometimes so close that the bayonets on their guns were almost touching, and were it not for the smoke from their guns; they would have been able to tell the colour of their opponents' eyes. To see the battlefields where families were torn apart with brothers fighting brothers and where men died almost every second, is something that, for me, didn't even sink in right away. It is hard to understand war and what it must have been like to be there, without actually having been there.

The fields, all neatly mowed, and trees planted according to a picture perfect plan, seemed unworthy of the many men who lost their lives there in the most brutal fighting of the war. All the monuments scattered over the fields, eventually became somewhat overcrowding. It seemed almost as though it would have been more fitting to have just abandoned the fields, and let them grow wild, as a reminder of the horrors that took place. It isn't right that so many should be cut out from life in war.

As hard as it was for me to try and understand why everything took place, I did learn that, even with all the tragedy that happens, life still goes on. Just before we were in Gettysburg and Antietam we had the privilege of touring the National Holocaust Museum. It is so easy to just recoil into a world of bitterness and rage, remembering nothing but the hurt caused and the lives cut short unjustly. It takes a lot of strength and courage to fight in a war, but sometimes it takes even more strength and courage to move on after the war. Abraham Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address, "…We cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion…"

There will never be enough monuments to remember all of the sacrifices that each individual made in any war. There will never be enough walls to write on, or fields, those kept nicely, and those not, to remind us of what happened. Time will never stop for any of those who survived, and somehow they will have to learn to go on. And it is up to me to be dedicated to remember what they did, and to carry on. I am thankful for all of the soldiers and veterans today who fight and have fought so bravely for my freedom. "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."

Naomi