DC Under the Sword of Damocles
The grim mood in the Military District of Washington
Last Monday was the 15th Anniversary of my brother Marc’s death in a Black Hawk helicopter crash in Germany. As the only member of the family on the east coast, I felt an obligation to get up to Arlington and put some flowers on the grave where he’s buried with his crew in Section 60.*
Since I was up there, I figured I’d also drop by Section 6 to drop some flowers on the grave of Commander Frank Gardiner Wisner. I was in a writing class on the novel last semester and told the class and Professor that I’d felt haunted by Wisner’s ghost from the first moments I’d spent down in Special Collections looking through his papers, and that’s not a glib observation, so one of the steps one takes to mitigate the negative risks of haunting is simply paying respects to their final resting places; same reason I left Orchids on James Angleton’s grave.
(*For more on that you can read this)
The Final Flight of Duke 27
The lights of Mannheim blink to the southwest as dusk falls forward of the cockpit.
Plus I hadn’t been there—to the Military District of Washington—for a while, not since before the inauguration, and after spending fifteen years working for the news media, its not like I trust what many of them have to say about the situation. It was time to spend some time on the ground and conduct my own assessment.
Thankfully I have a wide network of friends up in the District, friends with guest rooms and open hearts, so I was able to stay up there through the ice and snow, and observe.