Real Life/Tear Jerker/Memorials and Epitaphs

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
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—An Unknown Troper, on the price of freedom.
  • Most British memorials from the First World War include the words "Their name liveth for evermore" (from Ecclesiasticus) and, for the unidentified dead "A Soldier of the Great War Known Unto God." The words are particularly poignant when you realize that the words were chosen by Rudyard Kipling, whose son was also killed during the war.
    • Kipling himself would write a rather poignant poem about this own son's death: "If any question why we died; Tell them, because our fathers lied."
      • Even worse still when you hear the story behind the poem. Kipling's son was near-sighted, however Kipling pressured the Army into taking him on, to be patriotic. In one battle, his glasses were knocked off and, while searching for them, he was shot. Kipling never forgave himself.

"Have you news of my boy Jack?"
Not this tide.
"When d'you think that he'll come back?"
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

    • Almost all French memorials from the First World War include the word "Un Enfant De (town)...Mort Pour La France". Villages that are no more than wide places in the road will have such a memorial with a dozen names. People who crack jokes about the French being cowards are a Berserk Button for this troper.
    • In the same vein that the Trope image in Reims, France there is a memorial that ends with these sentence.

For the next generations for them to know and to remember

    • and then,

Memorial of the 1914-1918, built in 1924 rebuilt in 2005 after its destruction in 1945

    • This troper once visited some of the First World War cemeteries with his unit, pretty much suffering a distinctly un-heroic BSOD and being immediately and utterly disabused of the idea of war being a glorious adventure, which he suspects is why he was taken there in the first place.
    • Many towns destroyed in WWI were never rebuilt, but the map wasn't updated. Where there used to be villages, now are only piles of rocks as memorials for the town and people living there.
    • This troper went to Belgium and France for a history trip to see the war graves. The cemetery that made her want to cry most was Langemarck, the German cemetery. The fact that it wasn't as looked after as Commonwealth cemeteries still makes this troper bawl.
      • This Troper had a similar experience. What really made him lose it at Langemarck was the guide pointing to a sectioned off area in the center and stated "See that patch, there are nearly Twenty Five Thousand soldiers buried there." That mass grave is possibly one of the most soul destroying things this troper has ever seen.
    • The Devonshire Cemetry in Mametz seems today oddly positioned in a small patch of woods, however on the 1st of July 1916 it was the front line of the Battle of the Somme. An entire unit from the Devonshire Regiment was killed in the trenches and they were buried where they fell one of their comrades left a wooden sign that simply stated "The Devonshires Held This Trench, The Devonshires Hold It Still." They still hold it to this very day, and those words have been imortalised as the memorial to their sacrifice.
  • The sheer scale of the world wars is almost impossible to comprehend - almost, because the memorials are still around. The cemeteries are still there - thousands of them, each with thousands and thousands of graves... The First World War killed one person in fifty of the entire pre-war UK population; most casualties were young men, for whom the rates would be closer to one in five. And of the European nations involved in the war, the British casualty rates were among the lower. For a young Frenchman in 1914 the odds of surviving the war were closer to one in two.
  • O my dear John Ronald what ever are we going to do?
  • The Kojima Epitaph - which commemorates British soldiers killed in the Burma Campaign in World War 2, simply states "When you go home, tell them of us and say: For your tomorrow, we gave our today."
    • And nobody ever bloody remembers it. Seriously, name the last time you saw anything or anyone reference the Burma Campaign. (Sorry, it's a bit of a sore point for me)
      • -now take a look at history books, and ask youself what happens in Italy after the fall of Rome, and the Normandy Invasion takes the headlines the next day. They fought on until the last day of the war, all the way into Austria and the Balkans, almost unrecorded.
      • "name the last time you saw anything or anyone reference the Burma Campaign." The Burma missions in Medal of Honor: Rising Sun. Yes, it's THAT sad.
  • The World War I memorial in Washington DC deeply depressed this troper. Not only does it come across as neglected and altogether forgotten, the inscription dedicating it to those who served in the "war to end all wars" really twists the knife. Especially after one has walked past all the memorials to the wars that followed it. What makes it even more depressing is that the WWI memorial in DC is DC's WWI memorial. There is no national WWI memorial.
    • Actually there is, it's in Kansas City.
      • Not to diminish anything, but according to their website. It's the National WWI Museum at Liberty Memorial, according to their website. And, again, no offense to the fine people of Missouri, even if the memorial WERE theoretically the national WWI memorial... sorry, but it's still in Kansas City. I'm a bit provincial, I admit, but "National Memorial" kinda means "in DC," to a lot of people.
        • Too late. I already feel diminished. Liberty Memorial is right across the street and up the hill from Union Station. During the mobilization of the war, it was a major waystation for troops crossing the country for training or deployment. Also, one of the more famous veterans of WWI was Harry Truman who was from the Kansas City area (Independence and Grandview.)
        • And "'National Memorial' kinda means 'in DC'" is just not nice.
      • In the museum at the Liberty memorial, there's a glass walkway above a field of 9,000 artificial poppies, each representing a thousand soldiers who died on the western front. The sheer scale of it, and the fact that it only represents a portion of the deaths in World War I, makes me tear up every time.
    • The very idea of World War I is depressing. Life after life after life claimed by a war motivated by, well, nothing. Nothing at all. Just watch Blackadder Goes Forth for more detail.
      • Actually, it was motivated by ambition. Germany wanted to be a powerful country. More powerful than France, which caused a crisis in Morocco. Take a look at the Bismarchian Alliances: thay're made to confuse the countries to the point they didn't even know who was on whose side.
    • Or listen to "The Green Fields of France". The utter ultimate futility of such an endeavor boggles the mind.
      • Particularly the version of that song by the Dropkick Murphys. While they're normally a punk band, their version of "Green Fields of France" is very poignant.
      • If you really want to know how incredibly stupid World War I was, check out Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth. Over the course of the war she loses her fiance, her brother, and her two best friends, all while working as a nurse, forced to endure death, disease, and mutilation all around her. It's no wonder she became a pacifist afterwards. When this troper read it, he actually fantasized about going back in time and giving Vera a hug. (Of course, she got married afterwards, so maybe that wouldn't be the best idea...)
      • Or read about the Gallipoli Campaign. If it weren't for the heartbreaking story about the Turkish soldier who, during a small break, got out of the trench, picked up a wounded Allied soldier in the middle of no-mans-land, carried him to the Allied trench, then returned to his own side and started shooting again...
      • The Turks would prove to be heartbreakingly gallant and magnanimous about the entire battle, as evidenced by the epitaph written in the ANZAC monument in Australia (see the entry below for the full text). It was not written by an Australian, but by the Turkish Commander of the Gallipoli garrison, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. He would lose more men than the Allies, and would supposedly tell his men that "I am not ordering you to fight. I am ordering you to die. Because in the time it takes for us to die, other men can come and take our place." Yet, after the war, he supported an effort to create War Cemeteries for the British, Australian, and New Zealand dead. They still exist to this day.
      • And speaking of Turkey, there's the Armenian Genocide. Over one million innocent people were killed by the Ottoman Empire during WWI. It's saying something that Hitler has the most fitting words for this, "Who remembers now the destruction of the Armenians?". Yeah that quote,it's about the Holocaust, Hitler was justifying the destruction of the Jewish (and Roma, and non-Aryan races or 'imperfect') race.
        • "Heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives! You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well." --Ataturk
    • If you travel around Wallonia and northeast France you can see monuments to the Great War in the middle of the countryside and they seem almost out of place until you realize that they built them on top of where towns and villages used to be, everyone who lived in them most assuredly buried in the ground with their homes.
      • Most World War 1 battles actually occurred far away from many towns and villages, and the vast majority of them were rebuilt after the war. The only place where the above holds true is around the city of Verdun. A million men were lost on both sides in the single, most terrible battle of the war. The villages around the city were never rebuilt. According to the official French history of the war, these villages "Died for France."
        • In the pockmarked fields and woods - ground still torn apart by the bombs - small markers still indicate where the village streets used to be.
  • The Battle of Cameron. "What can I do with men like these? They are not men, but devils". (presenting arms by the OTHER side when passing the site of the battle for bonus points)
  • The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, located in Westminister Abbey, also has a memorable and tear-jerking Epitaph: "They buried him among the Kings, because he had done Good toward God and toward his House."
    • In fact, this memorial was so tear-jerkingly memorable that in 2002, the Unknown Warrior was voted as the 76th Greatest Briton of all time. Ahead of people like JK Rowling, Tolkien, Viscount Montgomery, and Lloyd George (the Prime Minister who commissioned the said memorial!)
  • Similar to the above, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Kremlin Wall in Moscow: "Your name is unknown, your deed is immortal."
  • The epitaph for the Spartans, often repeated, also deserves mention: "Go tell the Spartans, passerby. That here, obedient to their laws, we lie."
  • The whole thing's kind of a memorial, so: The Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. Seriously, do not plan to do anything for at least a day after visiting it. You will be too upset, either depressed or enraged, or even both. Especially after the train car full of shoes...
    • What bothered me the most were the awful blanket statements peers in my class were making about German people after going through said museum.
    • Speaking of those shoes, this troper witnessed something that enraged her first, and then depressed her more than the entire museum even could. While walking down that hall, she witnessed three teens laughing after one of them said "They stink!" Yes, they faced the shoes of murdered children, and that was what they had to say.
      • My berserk button has been pressed. God help us all.
        • Why, it's actually quite funny.
      • I felt the same way when I overheard someone in the hallways in my high school saying "Why couldn't a plane have hit our school so we'd get the day off?" on 9/11. Even though I was a naive, rather immature 15-year-old at the time, hearing that made my blood boil.
        • This troper can sympathize. A little after the tenth anniversary of 9/11, some idiot of my friends said, "Did you guys enjoy Take Your Plane to Work Day!". People laughed at the joke, I almost chuckled too, before feeling completely digusted.
      • ...That's exactly what my friend did when our class visited the Holocaust Museum. I don't remember if I laughed with her and her friend out of nervousness, or if I just didn't say anything, to be honest. I do remember thinking to myself "...What the FUCK, dude. I thought you were better than that," though. :/
        • The worst thing of all is that people are going to forget. It's going to get old, time is going to move on. There are grandchildren laughing at piles of shoes in museums, children who just don't understand what it was all about. I can't get over this horrible chilling terror deep down that something like this could happen again - and nobody understands, because we're forgetting what led us to it in the first place.
        • If it's any consolation to you, other Troper, This Troper has, on his metaphorical bucket list, plans to visit the death camps, to learn about the history, and to help keep things like the Holocaust from happening again.
        • This troper once went to take a blood pressure on an elderly gentleman and had the shock of his life when he saw a number tattooed in faded purple ink on his arm. Literally it felt like someone had hit me in the chest with a baseball bad and chills ran down my spine. I had seen such tattoos in history books and in films, but to actually see one on another human being was one of the most powerful experiences I've ever had.
        • This Troper met a sweet old man named Ivar who told her about how his mother was from Russia and his father from Germany. Then Ivar showed her the tattoo on his arm. It was numbers. He said, "If anyone tells you the Holocaust did not happen, you tell them they are liars. You tell them you met someone who was there and who knows it happened."
    • This troper remembers visiting a Holocaust memorial (Yad Vashem) in Israel. While I didn't exactly cry at it, I was rather shaken by a giant glass room of sorts where seven candles were reflected to produce a million points of light, one for each child that died in the Holocaust. Compounded when the tour guide later said that he could have been one of those lights.
    • This troper never stopped crying. It's that combination of Tear Jerker and Nightmare Fuel.
    • This troper never cried in either the DC Holocaust Museum or Yad Vashem, however, the last time he was at Yad Vashem, he left after a Heroic BSOD and realized that he would never have been born if it were not for the Holocaust (my grandparents met in a DP camp after being unable to return to their homes). For that reason, I cannot be anything other than thankful that the Holocaust happened.
      • Or the room where they keep the binders containing the hard copies of the the forms they have for victims of the Holocaust. There is enough space in that room for every Jewish victim's records. The amount of empty space on the shelves is particularly depressing.
    • There's a similar memorial in Paris, just from the view of Notre Dame. It's even more heartbreaking when you consider that those lights represent the people from just that city.
    • The Holocaust memorial in Miami Beach is simple yet gut-wrenching: It is a giant green hand, extending towards the sky representing a divine cry for help from those suffering. A number is etched on the hand, representing the numbers etched on concentration camp inmates. The arm before the hand is composed of statues of anonymous people crying and suffering. There are some statues representing victims, separate from the hand but surrounding it. Most tragic of all, in order for visitors to enter the area where the hand is, they have to enter the hallway facing a statue of a baby on the floor crying.
    • Then there's Auschwitz-Birkenau itself. This troper managed to stagger through the indescribably horrifying exhibits in some of the remaining buildings, only to completely break down once he saw the endless grid of ruined buildings stretching off into the distance and realize the sheer scale of what had happened.
      • Out of all the instruments of death in Auschwitz, one stands out. The Allies left the gallows still standing. It was here that they hanged several Nazi war criminals who were responsible for the Holocaust. It is, to quote a historian: "The only place in Auschwitz where one can feel any sense of joy."
    • Happened to this troper at the Jewish Museum in NYC: turned a corner and came face-to-face with one of the ledgers the death camp officials used to record the arrivals of prisoners. Something about the sheer size of the book, and the realization that every one of those names was an individual human being...
    • In this troper's Literature of the Holocaust class, the teacher was an absolute genius at getting the message across. At one point he brought a plastic box full of toothpicks to class. That is, completely full - you could not put anything else in this box. "This box contains 40,000 toothpicks," said the teacher, "and if we covered the walls of this room with boxes like this, we would just barely match the death toll of the Holocaust, in toothpicks." To this troper, no other analogy has ever come close to a box full of toothpicks in portraying the horror of the Holocaust.
      • Your teacher may have visited the museum at Auschwitz, which uses a very similar method to convey the magnitude of what happened there. You will walk into a room and behind a sheet of glass will be an entire other room full of hair or eyeglasses or shoes. These are not props. They're the real artifacts that belonged to victims of the Holocaust. That's a definite tearjerker.
    • It was the hair that made this troper lose it. The shoes and clothes and other items belonged to the victims, but the hair was actually part of them. I couldn't deal with it.
    • This German troper has been to two death camps so far, and both were an empathic punch to the gut. The sheer atmosphere of these places is so full of sadness, there are no words.
      • I'm a second-generation American. My grandfather on my father's side lived during the Holocaust. As a little kid he couldn't really do anything about it, but as a German I've been brought up to bear the burden of the shame of that generation. My grandfather always told me that my first duty above all else is to my conscience, no matter what the consequences. I've tried to live by those words, and they were only more tearjerking when I visited Dachau while over in Germany visiting my family. May it never happen again.
      • I always found the response to the Holocaust far more a tearjerker then the Holocaust itself. The Holocaust isn't a fucking conquer-the-world plot, and Hitler wasn't mustache-twirly evil. Someone didn't fuck up and leave the "evil" switch flipped on in Germany, and no, Germany wasn't temporarily conquered by Satan. It was a complex tragedy that continued for years upon years, thousands of workers and millions of witnesses. To reduce it to some momentary villainy or to a single vicious monster is to demean the thing itself.
        • This troper agrees with the last statement.
    • This troper discovered his Berserk Button in this museum during his 8th grade field trip to DC (Yeah, apparently they thought it was a good idea to bring middle-school children to the holocaust museum). Pacifism be damned when someone starts making fun of the dead.
      • Same for this troper. A school trip to Nuremberg, followed the next day by Dachau (in February, by the way). One guy thought he'd be a philanthropy and do something to lighten everyone's mood. Needless to say, playing Yakety Sax at full volume isn't the way to go in that situation. And the bitch of it is no one even laid a finger on him.
    • The comic strip Non Sequitur had a Sunday I've had in my office ever since. Danae, the little girl who is pretty much the star of the strip, is seated next to an elderly man, and says, "I gotta tell you, mister, that's an awfully boring tattoo on your arm. Its just a bunch of numbers." The man says "well, I got it when I was about your age, and I kept it as a reminder." "Oh, as a reminder of happier times?" she asks. "No", he replies, "as a reminder of a time when the world went mad." He then goes on to explain the Holocaust to her, and she envisions herself in the camps. When he finishes, she looks up with a tear rolling down her face, and says, "so, you keep it to remind yourself of the dangers of political extremism?" "No, my darling. To remind you."
      • Here it is. This troper adds that the sight of Danae actually crying - as well as the image of Danae in a Holocaust prison uniform (in her imagination, fortunately) - is perhaps the most haunting thing he's seen in a newspaper comic strip.
    • On a school trip, after being fairly mortified but silent at the displays of shoes and personal belongings of the victims of the Holocaust, This Troper finally broke down at the very end after seeing a small section of a wall on which were drawings made by children in the ghettos.
      • This Troper had a similar experience in Teresienstadt/Terezin, which was the Nazis' "model camp" that they showed to the Red Cross when they were investigating claims of Nazi terror. And after the Red Cross inspectors left, most of the children were sent on to Auschwitz and immediately gassed.
      • What struck at me the hardest about Terezin was the fact that, aside from the inhuman conditions and ever present depressing feel of the place, the commanders' house had a swimming pool of all things near it, for his children. Inmates were frequently shipped through a nearby gate, nothing separating them from the swimming pool with playing children. Once you realise the absolutely terrifying absurdity of it all, you can not help but think of Nazi's as utter and complete monsters. What were they thinking?
      • PLEASE remember something: Terezin had a gas chamber. It is what makes the whole thing extremely sad and extremely infuriating: In the later years there was a gas chamber. People died there. I was there and watched the cavities in the walls they clawed out with their HANDS. And everyone IGNORES it. The history books ignore it (most outside Germany and Czech Republic don't even know about it), history teachers don't know about it. Historians ignore it. It makes me terribly angry. Also on my first trip there still in school, they put us with 25 people into one cell. We could hardly breath and were near panicking and then they told us: Back in the day, that cell hold 60 prisoners.
    • This troper did a report on artists who'd been put into the concentration camps, threatened, abused, killed, and otherwise treated like absolute shit by the Nazi Government for their ideals, even while they or their families were fighting and dying for their countries, and the visceral anguish in some of their works is brutal. You can't look at pieces like Boris Taslitzky's drawings done on stolen paper while he was imprisoned in Buchenwald, or Kathe Kollwitz's work after she lost her grandson and husband during the war (after losing her son in WWI, no less) and not feel a sharp pang in your chest, especially since in most cases, they were putting on paper what they were actually seeing before them.
      • Moon Landscape, by Petr Ginz. Even more so that the drawing itself was brought by Ilan Ramon onto STS-107 and was destroyed during re-entry.
        • A small memorial for six million, and for seven.
    • The thing that got this troper was the baby clothes. Just ... the baby clothes.
    • This troper and her Papa visited Neuengamme Concentration Camnp in Hamburg. It was... Chilling. If Ghosts exist, this would definately one of the places that they do.
    • What got to This Troper was the message outside the D.C. Holocaust Memorial, with the statement about how we must never forget what happened, nor allow it to happen again. And inside the memorial is this small area dedicated to the massacres in Darfur and the Sudan. We HAVE allowed it to happen again...in Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda...That just broke my heart.
    • The speech Elie Wiesel gave at the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where he was an inmate.

Close your eyes and listen. Listen to the silent screams of terrified mothers, the prayers of anguished old men and women. Listen to the tears of children, Jewish children, a beautiful little girl among them, with golden hair, whose vulnerable tenderness has never left me. Look and listen as they quietly walk towards dark flames so gigantic that the planet itself seemed in danger. (...) Yitgadal veyitkadash, Shmay Rabba:[1] Weep for Thy children whose death was not mourned then: weep for them, our Father in heaven, for they were deprived of their right to be buried, for heaven itself became their cemetery.

  • The following epitaph for the ANZAC soldiers killed in Turkey in World War One, located in Canberra, written by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the first President of the Republic of Turkey, reads:

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours... You the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. Having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

    • The quote is even more moving when the reader realizes just how magnanimous the gesture is. Mustafa Ataturk was the Turkish commander during the Battle of Gallipoli before he became President of Turkey, so he saw first-hand the death and suffering of soldiers on both sides. In total, more than half a million soldiers became casualties during the campaign.
    • This troper went to Turkey and visited Gallipoli, and got his picture taken standing beside a massive stone tablet with those words on it. Ever since reading them when he was little, he has come to respect armed forces worldwide.
    • Historian John Keegan also notes another tear-jerking fact about Gallipoli: To this day, young Australians still visit the beaches in Turkey where their grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought and often died. They still remember.
      • We should. At every ANZAC day ceremony, there is a poem that is often read out.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
LEST WE FORGET.

      • The last nine lines are the ones read out at the ceremony.
      • It splits the difference between Real Life and Tear Jerker: especially in the context of the poem above, And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda.
      • There's some Narm included with that too, considering the last two lines essentially mean "We'll remember them unless we don't."
      • "Lest" does not mean "unless". It means something more along the lines of "in order to prevent," and carries the implication that the thing prevented is serious and terrible. In other words, "We'll remember them, because we must not forget." The implied ending is "Lest we forget, and let this nightmare happen again," which I think is pretty powerful motivation to remember, and not narm-ish in the least.
      • The three simple words "Lest We Forget" can make This Troper tear up almost anytime.
      • A poem, entitled "Gallipoli - A Post-War Epic" is engraved in a plaque in front of one of Turkey's war museums in Gallipoli. It takes the form of a conversation between a dead Anzac drummer who was fifteen when he was struck by a shell, and a dead Turkish soldier of unspecified age who is buried in an unmarked grave beside him. They describe their life and war experiences to each other in heart-wrenching poetry. This Troper refused to leave until he had gotten a picture of the plaque.
  • The British Remembrance Sunday and Cenotaph ceremonies use the last five lines of the above poem, to similar effect. Made stronger at the Cenotaph this year (2008) by the presence of the three surviving WWI veterans from each branch of the military, with wreaths laid on their behalf by decorated serving members. The contrast of the young and old and particularly the Flight Lieutenant helping the last founding member of her own service lay his wreath is heartbreaking. Footage of the ceremony
    • The above is made even more poignant because by the next Remembrance Sunday, all three of those survivors had died. Their names were Bill Stone, 108 (Royal Navy), Henry Allingham, 113 (Royal Naval Air Service/Royal Air Force), and Harry Patch, 111 (British Army). It is perhaps fitting that Allingham, the last surviving veteran of the Battle of Jutland and last founding member of the RAF, and Patch, the last veteran of the Western Front, wounded at the Battle of Passchendaele, died a week from each other.
      • Discussing the above was this article in The Economist. Both the content and the unusual level of emotion for what's often quite a dry publication make it very moving.
      • At the ceremony in the Abbey, standing participants (of which this troper was one for five years) are specifically told that to pass out from the emotion of it all carries no shame.
      • This troper's local Remembrance Day service - and others, where it's possible - includes a reading from that poem and then a lone trumpeter playing the Last Post. The combination tends to make everyone present at least well up.
  • Operation Frankton, a 1942 raid carried out by British Royal Marine Commandos in WWII resulted in the deaths of 10 of the 12 men involved - most were shot without trial in accordance with Hitler's 'Commando Order'. This Troper has always found the plaque on the wall where Sergeant Samuel Wallace and Marine Robert Ewart faced the firing squad to be a real tear jerker:

If I should die think only this of me:
That there's some corner of
a foreign field
That is forever England.

    • Those lines are taken from the poem "The Soldier" by Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), a young, talented poet from Cambridge who died in WW 1. A tear jerker indeed.
  • The Vietnam War Memorial in DC can be a wrenchingly sad place- people still leave flags, roses and other small memorials to the people listed there. But if you really want to make this troper cry, take her there when the staff are clearing them all away.
    • You should visit the rooms where the keep it all...
      • This Troper has seen a documentary on the people who collect everything. They document it, lovingly store it all, and above all, honor it for what it is. Many of the people in the show had to take breaks during the interviews from being overcome with emotion at some of the items that have been left.
    • This painting is both extremely poignant in showing the utter futility of the Vietnam war, the pain felt from losing friends that continues to hurt years after, and the fact that 35 to 40 years after coming home, over five hundred thousand men are still fighting the Vietnam War.
    • Thank you for that pointer, the painting is indeed poignant. But I saw one that affected me even more when I visited the Wall a few years ago. Same reflection on the Wall side, with a GI in fatigues carrying a rifle reaching forward to the Wall itself, but on our side was a young boy reaching toward the Wall, with his grandfather holding his other hand. I am crying as I am typing this.
    • The comic strip Foxtrot, not normally known for poignancy, had a Sunday strip where the family visited the Wall. Roger, the father, remarks the the older brother of his best friend died in the war and was on the Wall. Peter, the eldest son of the family, looks on sadly and says "I'm an older brother."
    • This Troper went to the Memorial a few weeks ago. What made me cry wasn't the sheer number of names, or of the people there; no, it was the fact that I saw my name on the wall. There's just something saddening and eerie about knowing that someone with the same name as you died for his country.
    • Noted geneologist and historian Jack Butler (the man who discovered the family link between Al Sharpton and Strom Thurmond), who served in Vietnam, once described a trip to see the wall shortly after it opened, and how utterly horrified he was when he realized that, while there, he had been searching not for the name of one of his many fallen comrades from that war, but rather he was searching for his own name on the wall, amongst the casualties.
    • Fewer people are familiar with the other Vietnam memorial. It's a statue of three young men in worn fatigues, standing as if they had just exited the jungle and surrounded by actual plants and trees. The statue is placed so that the three young men are gazing at the wall memorial. It was intended as a more "traditional" memorial than the wall, and the realism and familiarity the three present, along with their placement, gazing at the huge wall of names, is incredibly moving.
    • Also heartwrenching are the names not on the wall. Thanks to the military's use of Agent Orange as a defoliant during the war and its long-term effects on veterans' health, many Vietnam veterans are developing cancer and dying forty years after they stopped fighting. Though they are officially counted as casualties of the war and afforded all the honors due to them, there is not enough room on the wall to inscribe all their names.
  • No one mentioned the Korean War Memorial? It's similar to the Vietnam Memorial, and nearby. It has a similar wall, featuring names and engraved images, plus a reflecting pool and statues depicting a squad of soldiers on patrol--including men from every branch of the US armed forces except for the Coast Guard.
    • In the Korean War Memorial the engraved images are on reflective stone to reflect the viewer. The standing statues are sized slightly larger than life size. The way their eyes are depicted makes them look somewhat hollow. They are set out as if still on patrol, still at war. This troper was very unsettled and moved by this memorial, possibly more because it isn't as well known.
      • Actually... this troper is kind of unsettled by the memorial, since the story behind its construction is one big, reactionary, macho "screw you" to Maya Lin and her very thoughtful work. Talk about insensitive. To...everyone.
      • Could you explain this? I don't know much about it, and when I looked for links I couldn't find any that weren't on pay sites. If there was injustice here, it should be more widely publicized.
    • This troper's mother was unable to take photos of the memorial because it was so moving.
      • The worst part for this troper is the ensuing genocide in Cambodia that America could have prevented if we had stayed. Millions of people killed in four years by way of execution, starvation, and labor.
      • Worse yet: The U.S.A. backed the Khmer Rouge and recognized the Democratic Kampuchea as the real Cambodia, when the Vietnamese (read: Communists) invaded Cambodia because of how brutal it was there and made a non-Khmer Cambodia.
    • The moving wall visited the town where this troper goes to college. As he was talking to some of the people there at the information tent, a few said they were vets from Vietnam. They said they could put it together and everything (it's moved in about 15-20 different panels), but once the wall was up they wouldn't go near it. They were too afraid to look at it closely and see the name of one of their friends that didn't make it back.
  • In 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin were preparing to go to the moon, Bill Safire wrote a speech called "In Event of Moon Disaster" that was to be read by President Nixon in case the astronauts died or were stranded on the moon due to a mission disaster. With gut-wrenching lines such as "These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice," it is a relief that the Apollo 11 mission to the moon was a success.
    • The crew of Apollo 11 would instead leave a plaque that read: Here Men From The Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We Came in Peace For All Mankind.
    • Jay Barbree's sentence ending for the chapter on the mission "Below, for that single day at least, all was right on a planet called Earth."
  • Two years before Apollo 11, on a blustery January evening, astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were burned alive during tests for what would have become the first flying Apollo Command Module. The test mission, originally referred to as simply AS-204, was post-humously rechristened as Apollo 1. Launch Complex 34 would only be used once more, for the successful launch of the first manned Apollo mission (Apollo 7), before being decommissioned. Two plaques remain at LC-34 to honor their memory.

In memory of those who made the ultimate sacrifice so others could reach for the stars
Ad astra per aspera
(A rough road leads to the stars)
God speed to the crew of Apollo 1

    • About 100 meters out from the beach in Long Beach, California are three man-made islands that contain drilling rigs inside of concrete towers to make them look clean and neat. On the official maps issued by the city, the three islands are identified as "Island Grissom", "Island Chaffee" and "Island White".
    • At the Smithsonian event celebrating the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, Neil De Grasse Tyson read the names of all of the astronauts in flight order, asking them to stand up. The tone of his voice when he said "Would the family of GUS GRISSOM please stand up." and the subsequent applause were a great moment.
  • Another simple memorial for the achievements of the Apollo program: Although the year 1968 became one of the worst humanity had ever experienced (with the Vietnam War, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, plus riots all over the world), it ended on a tear-jerkingly positive note when Apollo 8 made their historic broadcast on Christmas Eve. As one ordinary citizen so simply and aptly put it: Thank you, Apollo 8. You saved 1968
    • Listening to the end of Apollo 8's Christmas broadcast always gives this troper chills, especially the intonation Frank Borman gave the last few words "We close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and god bless all of you, all of you ON THE GOOD EARTH!"
    • The space program(s) in general are a tearjerker for this troper. Amazing, but the kind of amazing that makes her want to sit still, not punch the air. The Pale Blue Dot gets at her. "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us." And The Blue Marble. Just knowing that this is us, this is our world, and it seems so delicate and fragile.
    • This Troper agrees wholeheartedly. As an example, he's almost conditioned himself to get this sand in the eye at the sound of "Eagle has landed".
  • Seeing the Menin Gate ceremony in Ypres (Ieper), at the official memorial to all British soldiers without graves killed in Belgium took this troper completely to pieces.
    • This troper was similarly taken to pieces by the playing of the Last Post at this ceremony. And even more so when remembering that this has been done every single evening since 1928, with the exception of 4 years of occupation during World War 2. In fact the very evening it was liberated, the practice resumed.
      • ...while there was still fighting elsewhere in the town. They restarted the ceremony as soon as the Gate was in friendly hands.
    • Field Marshal Herbert Plummer - a respected general from the First World War who cared deeply for his men - was the one who unveiled the Menin Gate memorial. Speaking to the families of the missing soldiers, he ended his speech with the words "At last, it can be said: He is not missing. He is here!"
      • And the search for the missing never really ended. Ninety years after their deaths, and fifty years since the last Commonwealth War Cemetery was opened, two hundred and fifty British and Australian soldiers will finally have a dignified grave. They will no longer be among the "missing". They will be here.
      • It's even more sobering when you look at the Menin Gate, and similarly the Thiepval Memorial and others, and you see them plastered with names, and realize that's just the ones that aren't commemorated with a grave of their own, and fell on only part of the front, and only for part of the war.
        • The sheer scale of the loss and suffering of the First World War is best illustrated by this story: Mrs Rosie Reader's son Alec was killed during the war, and was listed among the "missing". She made several trips to France, hoping to find his grave, or at least his name on one of the many memorials. She never found any trace of him, and died thinking that his sacrifice had been forgotten. The family would finally get closure over eighty years after the war. Rosie's grandchildren had made one last trip to France, and they finally found Alec. His name was at Thiepval.
    • This troper has visited a military cemetary in Ieper and photographed a trio of graves: a general between two private soldiers. There are no ranks in a graveyard.
  • The poem "In Flanders Fields" written by Canadian Army surgeon John McRae in WWI, after the death of his friend. He died a few days after he wrote it.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields."

    • If that needs to be sadder, consider that the poppies were only growing because the artillery fire was so intense that it had turned up lower levels of dirt, and thus the poppies only grew there during (and shortly after) the war.
    • This troper lives in his hometown, and never hears the end of that poem on Rememberance Day. It makes her heart drop to her stomach every time.
    • The music is equally heartrending.
  • This troper recently went to the Canadian war museum when it was near deserted, to see an exhibit on just how bad the trenches were for Canadian soldiers. He had to leave the exhibit halfway through, because he had started to break down and cry for the first time in over a decade.
    • This troper went to see the exhibit on eugenics and then the rest of the museum afterward. She left because after the first, the rest seemed a bit too cheerful.
    • This troper always starts crying when I enter the two different places at the Museum: The Regeneration Hall, when the plaster casts for the Vimy Ridge Memorial are displayed, and the Memorial Hall, which hold a single item: The headstone of the Unknown Soldier. The room is bare concrete, completely silent, and the only light is a single small window high up the wall, which shines a ray of light on the headstone every Remembrance Day. I tear up thinking about it. I am also moved at pretty much any war cemetery, memorial, especially when people are being disrespectful, such as kids running around.
  • The Tomb Of The Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery - "HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY AN AMERICAN SOLDIER KNOWN BUT TO GOD". Add to that that the tomb is guarded by an Army soldier (wearing no rank insignia, so that he never outranks the Unknown Soldier) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - with no interruption for the past 70 years. The guards walk exactly 21 steps, turn and face the monument for 21 seconds, then turn and walk back 21 steps (to symbolize the 21-gun salute, the highest honor a fallen soldier may receive).
    • The Tomb of the Unknowns is heartrending, but the Cemetery itself is bad enough. Row on row on row of white marble headstones in perfectly straight lines. Every one of them someone who served their country. Well, except for spouses and family and stuff. And the graves from the Lee-Custis Family. And the slaves. The Civil War graves are even sadder.
      • This Troper visited Arlington Cemetery for the first time last year. Almost as soon as she saw the tombstones, the emotion hit her like a wall. So many tombstones, all a person who sacrificed something for her country (She considers sending a loved one to war as a sacrifice worth remembering). She also felt terribly inappropriate dressed in her hoodie, jeans and sneakers.
    • This Troper stood strong as his grandfather' remains was interred in a vault in Arlington just a few months after 9/11, but the combination of the solemnity of the ceremony, the sadness of the cemetery, and the overlooking view of the Pentagon caused him to break down.
    • This Troper went to walk along the Cemetary on day late August. It was raining. My entire family agreed it help to enhance the sadness.
    • This Troper went to visit DC with her school last November. At Arlington, the class was informed that they were running out of room. This Troper cried. She also cried when she watched grade-school children lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown soldier. Actually, in retrospect, that trip was pretty depressing considering we followed Arlington up with a trip to the Holocaust Museum.
  • The Vietnam soldiers' memorial in Washington D.C. The vast, reflective wall that stretches so far with every name carved on it, showing every year's cost, was originally the only monument, and it is fitting. Later they added the statues: the statue in honor the nurses and medical forces, three women, one tending to a wounded soldier, one looking to the sky for help, one clutching a helmet in her hand. But the one that gives you goosebumps is the memorial for the soldiers: three young men walking side by side and facing the wall of names, all of them looking a little surprised, as if they've just spotted it for the first time, and wonder what it is.
  • "But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not 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."
  • The Arizona-Missouri memorial in Pearl Harbor is also stunningly poignant and beautiful. On one side you have the wreck of the USS Arizona - signifying the start of World War 2 for the United States. On the other side you have the USS Missouri - the battleship where the Japanese surrendered and signaled the end of World War 2. Oil still leaks from the Arizona's hull even after sixty years, as though the ship is still crying for the hundreds of sailors who died aboard her. Meanwhile the Missouri is standing watch over the Arizona's grave, as though telling the fallen sailors: "Rest easy. We won."
    • Just reading this comparison between the two ships almost made this troper cry. While at work.
      • This other troper now has to explain to her English teacher why she's all teary-eyed. And I never cry.
    • I believe we now need such a picture in time for the next Veterans Day, done in a period art style.
      • Not in period art, but here's one troper's try at it with moviemaker: [1]
    • This Troper lives within a stone's throw of Pearl; her grandparents told her exactly where they were when they saw the Japanese planes, and she is pretty much next door to the harbor from her campus. It's a little surreal to look up from your history-book, depicting Pearl Harbor on that day, and see it as it is today.
    • What really got This Troper was the myth that the Arizona will only stop leaking oil after the last survivor has finally died and joined his comrades on the ship once again.
    • This Troper had the great pleasure to meet one of the Naval officers who was actually at Pearl (warbird air show in Virginia). In fact, the one who first sent out a fire command on that day. Hearing him talk about his comrades on that day was a tear jerker in itself. Definitely part of the Greatest Generation.
  • The tomb in Cambridge, England for the deaths of thousands of Americans during WWII is particularly gut-wrenching. Thousands of near-identical white gravestones, the only difference being the cross or the star on the top to signify religion. It's one thing reading that 75 million died, it's quite another to see them all laid out. And there are only around 5 and a half thousand there.
    • This troper went to the same college his father did. On one of our first visits to the campus, Dad went into the main building, and saw a bronze scroll with the names of the students who'd gone off to World War II and not made it back. Dad had gone to college with many of those men---he took one look and started crying, because he had gone to a different college after the war and hadn't known that those men had died.
    • It's hard to convey the sheer scale of suffering that was endured by any generation who had to experience a World War. But for this troper, the most gut-wrenching image was the picture of a mother who had lost seven sons during the First World War. And she was attending the burial of the Unknown Warrior in Westminister Abbey - where the guests of honor were 100 women who had lost their husband and all of their sons during the war.
    • This troper remembers seeing a photo of a 1920s-era Canada Day (Dominion Day) parade with four women in a car saying "These four mothers gave 28 brave sons." Do the math. Troper's hometown lost 126 men out of 8000 total residents.
      • There are war memorials all over the place in Britain. And there are about 41 Thankful Villages in England and Wales that didn't lose anyone in the Great War. That's less than one lucky village per county.
  • The "Murambi Genocide Memorial" "in Rwanda" (graphic images warning) is chilling in its simplicity. It consist of a school where the classrooms are full of the mummified bodies of the massacred and heartbreakingly some rooms full of dead children. This troper found the worst was seeing the faces frozen mid scream with visible wounds and still sporting hair and clothes... The fact the guide witnessed his entire family murdered on the site and has a hole from a bullet in his head turned really brings the horror even further home.
  • The Fisherman's Wife, a statue of a woman looking out over the sea in this Swedish troper's home city of Gothenburg. It is a memorial to all those Swedish non-combatant fishermen and merchant mariners that perished at sea during the two World Wars. Seeing it always fills the mind with sadness.
    • The British memorial for their own fishermen and merchant mariners reads: "The twenty-four thousand of the merchant navy and fishing fleets whose names are honored on the walls of this garden gave their lives for their country and have no grave but the sea."
      • I took a military history class this year. In WWII, by percentage, you were more likely to die in the British Merchant Marine than in the Royal Navy, Army, or Air Force.
  • Here lies one whose name was writ in water--Epitaph of John Keats.
  • This. Dedicated to the great memory of Mel Blanc.
    • This editor's next door neighbor owns that picture and remembers seeing it during a visit. Even though I was born after his death, I bit my lip to keep from tearing up.
  • Few things can compare to the horror of the Cambodian Killing Fields. No one seems to realise the slaughter that went on in Cambodia. "The Killing Fields"
  • The Space Mirror. And while she's at it, this troper would give anything -- anything -- to hear, just once, the "Navy Hymn" ended with the verse Robert Heinlein wrote for it:

Almighty Ruler of the All
Whose pow'r extends to great and small
Who guides the stars with steadfast law
Whose least creation fills with awe
O grant Thy mercy and Thy grace
To those who venture into space.

    • ...wow. That should be a required part of any funeral for an austronaut.
  • This troper is really impressed by most memorials. Two spring to mind: The holocaust monument in Berlin. A WWII gravesite in Thailand. The first, because I went in with my family, chattering a bit. We came out silent. For a couple of blocks, none of us spoke a word, stunned by the display. And to think it is only some black square columns. Higher than a man. All arranged in perfect order, where the Nazis were famous for. The gravesite in Thailand was shocking for a different reason. We were there on vacation, far away from where I live. Then, you walk across the cemetery, and you suddenly see Dutch flags on the gravestone. Dutch names. Hundreds of them. Of course, I knew about our colonial history, but to encounter so many fallen Dutch on a place where you'd least expect it. I was moved to tears....
    • The cemetery in Thailand commemorates the British and Dutch prisoners-of-war who died building the Burma Railway, made famous by the movie "Bridge on the River Kwai". Several thousand soldiers from both countries died building the railroad (seven thousand of whom are buried in Thailand), but their suffering was almost nothing compared to the deaths of nearly 90,000 Asian slave-laborers who died on the railroad because of Japanese brutality. Of the ninety-thousand men, women, and children who died on the railroad, only three are buried in proper graves. And the only inscription on those graves is the word "Unknown".
  • The Battle of Culloden was fought on this moor 16th April 1746. The names of the Gallant Highlanders who fought for Scotland & Prince Charlie, are marked by the names of their clans. And then you walk that bloodstained moor, the site of the last battle fought on British soil, where 1500 Highland men lost their lives. They were buried where they fell, with only stones - most etched simply with "Mixed Clans" - to mark that mass grave. To this day their ghosts still whisper through the grass...
    • I visited Culloden and I can honestly say that there's something so heartbreaking about it. It was very windy the day that we were there, but there was something deathly silent beneath it.
  • This Troper remembers a cartoon at the of a Horrible History book, famous for making people laugh at history's grimmer side, that actually tugged at the heartstrings. A teenage girl is looking at war memorial listing every major world conflict alongside an old man and states dejectedly:

"I forgot which one was supposed to be the war to end all wars."

    • There is another Horrible Histories book, about the Second World War. In it is the story of how a Polish police officer working with the Nazis found an attic full of Jewish women and children during the war. He turned to the Nazis below him, said, "there's no one there!" and left. At least one of the children survived (the story does not mention if any others made it through the war) to tell this story. At the end of it, the author writes:

War brings out the worst in some. It brings out the best in others.

  • The story of the Sullivan Brothers. All five were on the same ship, the USS Juneau. The ship was sunk by a Japanese submarine, and the survivors were left behind to die in the water due to the threat of further submarine attacks. All five brothers were killed, along with all but ten of the seven-hundred man crew. Years later, the US Navy dedicated a ship to them, the U.S.S The Sullivans. On being asked what she thought, Mrs. Sullivan replied simply "My boys are back at sea again." Possibly the single most unselfish, patriotic thing this troper has ever heard.
    • Here is the mother's letter to President Roosevelt, and his personal response.
  • This troper was left shaken by a World War One cemetary near the small village of Langemarck in Belgium. What was so special about it? It was a German cemetary, one of only four in the whole country in contrast to over three hundred Commonwealth cemetaries, even though the Germans lost the most men in World War One. Many of the graves are unknown as the remains were only laid to rest 40 years later. The mass grave in the centre along with the individual names carved on stone blocks surrounding it is a sight to behold. To be reminded that the losers of any war, branded as 'bad' by the winners who write history are people too was profound.
    • The history of the Langemarck cementery is actually a bit more heart-wrenching. It was built to commemorate tens of thousands of German college students who were killed during the Battle of Ypres, an incident Germans would later dub the "Massacre of the Innocents". Although college students were exempted from the pre-war drafts, almost all of them volunteered at the outbreak of the war, and they often marched off under the command of their own school teachers who had also returned to the colors. Most were slaughtered during the aforementioned battle, and the remains of about twenty-thousand of them were buried at the mass grave in Langemarck alone. The stone blocks surrounding the mass graves are actually the names of every German University - representing the enormity of the loss.
    • This troper visited the German cemetary in Normandy, just outside of Picauville. What really teared her up was the amount of unknown soldiers there...and the fact that the majority were between 18 and 30.
    • In England there is a German cemetary called (if I recall correctly) the 'Soldatenfeindhof'. It is enormous, and has British-style rows of neat white headstones; all are of WWI and WWII German soldiers who died in Britain after being evacuated here to hospital after being captured. I first found it in 1976, when detailed to stop the grass fires of that summer burning it down.
      • The name is probably 'Soldatenfriedhof', simply meaning 'Soldier Cemetary'. ('Soldatenfeindhof' would mean 'Soldier Enemy Yard'.)
  • The Maison des Esclaves in Senegal.
  • Hiroshima and Nagasaki are mentioned further down the page, but I'm surprised no one's mentioned the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima. It's focused on promoting peace and eliminating nuclear weapons, and it has diagrams and exhibits about the effect of the atomic bomb. It also has clothing and other belongings worn by people killed in the blast, and it's all just graphic and horrifying enough to break anyone down. Also, the Peace Memorial Park, which has things like the A-Bomb Dome, a building that's kept in the state it was immediately after the bombing, along with other heartwrenching monuments.
    • This troper has been there; for him, the atom bomb's aiming point (a unique T-shaped bridge) still being in use, and at the edge of the peace park, was the most piquant detail. That and poor little Sadako's memorial, with all the bundles of paper cranes schoolchildren still bring on school visits.
    • Reading stories about young teenage kids (13 and 14 years old even) going out to help create firebreaks in the morning and coming back home burned half to death, only to die in their parents' arms that very night... And then having to read the story of Sadako, seeing the memorial with her holding a giant golden crane on top...
    • There is a monument in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park with an inscription that always move me to tears. The meaning of the inscription is something like "Sleep in peace, for the mistake shall not be repeated", but that's not giving it any justice at all.
  • The Nanjing Massacre Memorial put the last lingering traces of this troper's Nipponophilia to eternal rest. That was a week well-ruined.
    • Trust me, you're not the only one. The whole "honor, samurai" culture just didn't seem so pretty, especially after that contest to kill 100 with a katana.
    • Hell, this troper couldn't even look at Gimli & Legolas's killing contest from LOTR the same way after hearing about that.
    • This Troper, a bit of a otaku, read it. And damn it changes everything (specially when you see how Japanese people today try to whitewash what happened, and there isn't a true universal knowledge of the horrors that the Japanese committed in the Second Sino-Japanese war like the Holocaust has.
  • Still no mention of the National World War II Memorial? The memorial is one beautiful tribute to everyone who lived and died in the war. It's one of the most stunning things this troper has ever seen.
    • I was in DC during the summer of 2006. When we went to the WWII memorial I met a WWII veteran. I cried all the way back to the bus.
  • For Canadians that actually give a damn about their military history, the Vimy Ridge, Dieppe, and Juno Beach memorials.
    • I'm a Canadian, and I cry every time I see the Vimy Ridge memorial. It's beautiful, and so massive...
      • Even Adolf Hitler, who had faced Canadian troops in battle during the First World War, paid his respects to the Vimy Ridge memorial. During the entire German occupation, an honor guard was posted at Vimy Ridge to prevent it from being defaced in any way.
        • That's worth an annual drink of water in Hell, if nothing more.
    • The Battle of Hong Kong: a battle that so many people forget, it's sad that few remember the sacrifices made by the Canadians and allies against the Japanese Invasion Force.
  • The Pentagon Memorial, in Arlington, Virginia, is one of the most moving things this troper has seen. It's essentially a plaza with a whole bunch of benches. Underneath each bench are names and ages of people who were killed at the Pentagon on 9/11. Some of the benches point towards the actual building, which means the names that are on it were killed in the Pentagon, and other benches point away from the building and towards the sky, which means the people whose names are on it were on the plane.
  • This troper grew up in northern Vermont. The Civil War memorials, which are in every town, are staggeringly long. Then realize how much smaller each town was back then.
  • http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/05/vif2.bugler/index.html One man paying his last respects to thousands. Read it.
  • Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est". Then think that it wasn't written by a pacifist, but by a young soldier who died months later in combat.
    • And yet the Latin poem the title comes from teaches that it is better to stand firm and think patriotic thoughts than turn and run, as it is running away that gets you horribly killed; which has been true in countless wars, unfortunately.
  • Cambodia has a memorial I will remember forever - a simple shrine, with glass windows on the side...filled with the skulls of those who died in the Killing Fields. While it should be slightly Narm-ed by its similarity to a particular unit from a wargame that I play, it makes it even more poignant.
    • You would be talking about the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum? No? Either way, there is a poem on the walls of the museum. Take some time to mull over it, imagine the situation, because it happened and millions went through that.
  • This troper broke down and sobbed at the 9/11 Memorial in NYC. It's right next to the gaping pit that is all that is left of the World Trade Center. You can listen to the radio calls from the firefighters as they struggled to escape the Towers... and then you learn that all of those men are dead. There's a wall covered in the posters left by panicking relatives, depicting hundreds of missing loved ones. The posters have photos of those missing and lost on their wedding days, hugging their parents, opening gifts with their children. The only thing they have in common is that every one seems to include a pleading "PLEASE" and descriptions of tattoos, etc., presumably in case their loved one was in a hospital. The experience was all the more heartbreaking because our host was Lee Ielpi, one of NYC's most decorated firefighters, whose son Jonathan, also a firefighter, died at the WTC. When this troper began sobbing, Mr. Ielpi handed her a tissue and said, "It's okay to cry. It's very sad." He then talked about how he felt sincerely lucky because his son's body was found intact.
    • This troper was close to tears at the 9/11 memorial at the Newseum in D.C. As this American troper was living in Canada when 9/11 happened, she don't remember much other than a long silence that her elementary school had when the news came. So when she went to the museum and watched the footage of the plane crashing into one of the towers and then collapsing, and the interviews of the reporters, photographers, and camera men and women who watched and reported on the incident, she really began to understand just what had happened that day. It's a fantastic memorial, even if it is just a museum piece...
  • This troper went on a school trip to the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial. It certainly didn't help that it had been raining on and off all day, or that we had just visited the D-Day landing beaches. There were crosses as far as we could see, it was like they went on forever. Then this troper realized that these were just a fraction... and cue waterworks.
    • When relatives of solders who are buried at any of the cemeteries in Europe come to see the grave one of the attendents will take them to it and then they will rub sand into the stone so the family can read the name for it can be hard it see. The sand comes from Omaha beach because only it is considered worthy.
  • Try going to Andersonville in Georgia, knowing the history of the place. It's a few minutes north of Americus. Being there wasn't exactly a tear jerker for me, but it had that sort of aura around it that made me want to keep from speaking too loudly, and I caught some of my less composed classmates crying at intervals.
  • Tsitsernakaberd, a memorial to the Armenian Genocide, which was a precursor to the Holocaust. The accompanying museum is what really gets the water works going; to think that human beings are capable of such intense cruelty, brutality and butchery to one another, and on top of it, to continue to deny that it ever happened at all.
  • The Sarajevo Roses, one of the most beautiful and poignant ways of commemorating the loss of human life that may have ever been devised. [2]
  • This story: Warsaw ghetto's 220 young fighters honored
    • And this quote in particular

Edelman recalled in a recent interview with The Associated Press that the Nazis "wanted to destroy the people, and we fought to protect the people in the ghetto, to extend their life by a day or two or five."


"I remember them all boys and girls 220 altogether, not too many to remember their faces, their names," he said of the young fighters.

  • Also in Warsaw, a rather understated memorial. Hundreds of metal crosses welded onto a mine cart. Every cross represents ONE THOUSAND Polish citizens who lost their lives during WWII.
  • This troper was wandering around London's Hyde Park when I came upon a memorial that I'd never heard of. Like so many other memorials in London, it's dedicated to the dead of the British Empire. But not to humans; this one was dedicated to all of the animals, mostly horses, that died in Britain's wars over the years, with the engraved images of a variety of animals including horses, camels, and (most tear-jerkingly for me), elephants. What really set off my manly waterworks, though, was the inscription on the memorial reading "They Had No Choice."
    • At the foot of Tokyo tower is a memorial to a group of sled dogs that survive months alone in the polar regions after being abandoned by their owners (IIRC) a Japanese polar expedition. It seems the Brits and the Japanese both have respect for their guilt over misuse of animals.
  • A tearjerker not mentioned here yet is the Memorial Park in Shanghai, China. It made me so sad because of the striking amplitude of truth and artificiality. We have a very modern park, much nature, and on two sides around the Memorial Museum there is the cemetery. A very cared for cemetery often with the pictures of the fallen on the graves, with lights and incense. And then you walk through the other part of the park full of statues which are... not really memorial but propaganda. They are made with inspiration of northern, Greek and maybe Roman influence. They don't remember, they strengthen and it made me soo sad to think of all those who fell during the war and to see that they are placed with statues like these, real sadness on the one side, absolute artificiality on the other.
  • Tombstone, aka The Town Too Tough To Die doesn't seem like much of a Tear Jerker. Then when you visit Boothill cemetery the reality of all the people that died hits you like a ton of bricks. Nearly half of all the graves marked are unmarked, which just means that a lot of the people who died in Tombstone weren't all very well known and maybe even had no family to turn to. Then you see the graves of the foreigners which indicates some racism that may have been involved. Then you get to the one black man who was lynched and another man who got executed for a crime he didn't commit. The worst of all of these are the two graves marked for infants, one only aged 11 months. This troper visited this site just expecting normal history stuff that the rest of the town had. Little did he know that he would leave the cemetery crying like a baby.
  • The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington, VA. Just think, three people who were killed in action, but no one knows who they are, where their families are, and the chances of them ever being identified are long gone. I've never felt more sad in one place than I did there.
    • There was actually a fourth tomb in The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In 1998, twenty-six after he was killed, Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie was finally identified and returned home to his family. The tomb - originally inscribed with the word "Vietnam" - has been reinscribed with the words: "Honoring and Keeping Faith with America's Missing Servicemen"
    • Similarly, there was a tomb of the Unknown Child in Halifax, Canada. It was the body of an unidentified young boy recovered from the Titanic, who would come to represent all the children lost at sea. Citizens and sailors from Halifax took care of the boy's funeral and continued to guard and honor the grave as though he was one of their own. After almost a century, a team of scientists attempted to identify the remains, even though they knew the chances were slim. Yet "Somebody wanted us to know who this child is". He now has a name
  • This troper went to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam this summer. She managed to get through it alright until she got to the bit where they were talking about Anne in Auschwitz. Finding out the fact that Anne died a month before the camp was liberated made this troper break down. Then, in the next room, they had a video of Otto Frank talking about his daughter.God, did the waterworks flow that day...
  • In 1979, the wife of Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko died suddenly of cerebral hemorrhage. The column he wrote in tribute to her is in a book collection of his work, and never fails to make this troper tear up every time he reads it.
  • The Remembrance day ceremonies, particularly the moment of silence. For those outside the commonwealth (or commonwealth countries that commemorate it differently than Canada does): These events are held every November 11th in various places around the country and all schools, as well as being broadcast on television, to commemorate the world wars and war veterans in general. The moment of silences begins and ends with a single bugle plays The Last Post and The Rouse, respectively, which is moving in itself. When it ends, everyone present at the ceremony stands in silence for two minutes, during which time they are to reflect on the sacrifices made for our freedoms. You could hear a pin drop during that time. It's incredibly poignant, and a tear-jerker for sure.
    • It's even more tearjerking in this tropers hometown where the silence is only broken by the roaring engines of 3 WWII warplanes passing overhead from the Canadian Warplane Heritage museum. One of the planes being an Avro Lancaster bomber, it's both heart-rending and awe-inspiring to see those planes pass over the park after the bugle plays, knowing that thousands of men died in or because of these aircraft but at the same time it's because of their sacrifice in the air, on land and on the sea that we can live free.
  • The statue "City without a heart" in Rotterdam that commemorates those killed in the bombing of the city during the Blitzkrieg. Already heartwrenching by itself when you think of the civilian victims (which nearly included my own parents) but all the more painful when you realise this was one of the main reasons the Netherlands capitulated: to prevent this from happening to other civilians. It Got Worse...
  • This troper went with his Cross Country team to the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial while in the area for a race. I'll be honest, I was having trouble from the first room where they detailed how an entire day-care center was caught in the blast, but I was surrounded by my peers, so I kept it together. However, we later came to a room filled with pictures of those who were killed, with personal items placed by the family for each one. I completely lost it when I saw a picture of a young man in some kind of military uniform, and the only item in his case was a gold-plated Star Trek symbol. I don't even like Star Trek, but it really hit me how this guy had interests and an entire life, all gone. Forever.
    • For this Troper, the museum itself was more interesting than sad, until the room with the personal belongings. One display had some broken coffee mugs from a collection that a woman working in the next building kept in her office. She didn't die, she didn't even really get hurt, she just had stuff knocked around by the shock of the blast. Still, since This Troper collects coffee mugs, those coffee mugs made it real, like a punch to the gut, and he had to go take a minute in the corner of the room to collect himself.
  • Theres a traveling exhibit called Always Lost: A Meditation On War that came to my college for a few months this fall. It's a exhibit honoring the soldiers who have died in the two current wars. It has the typical trappings, such as medals, guidebooks, and even one of the decks of playing cards with all of the major targets in Iraq on them. What was really striking were the walls that featured wallet sized photos of every American solider killed in action since 9/11, as well as an area that featured candid shots of civilians and soldiers.
  • The Taj Mahal. According to legend it was built by an Indian monarch out of grief for the passing of one of his favorite wives.
    • He was Shah Jahan, and the wife he built it for was Mumtaz Mahal. Even though he had more than one wife, she was his Empress.
  • The memorial for the Liquidators (those who went in to seal off the Factory to prevent the radiation from spreading further, knowing that they were all going to die in the process) Chernobyl Power Plant Disaster. The inscription bares the phrase "To those who saved the world."
    • A sad tinge to this is that the memorial was paid for by the families of victims, charities and donators... and not the government that sent the Liquidators in. Sure what they did had to be done by somebody or we might not be here talking now, but they could at least have helped out with the bloody memorial.
    • The book Voices From Chernobyl, a compendium of firsthand accounts from people who lived in Pripyat, really drives it home. The book opens with the narrative of a woman who, at the time, was a newlywed; her husband was a volunteer firefighter, one of the first men called to the scene. She describes the time spent with her husband in the hospital: watching helpless as his body literally fell apart; disobeying hospital rules to stay by his bedside, knowing that she was being exposed to the same radiation that was killing her husband--and their unborn child. I read the story a mere four months after my own wedding; I broke down sobbing...and went to give my husband a huge hug.
  • This troper found a grave of an infant. The headstone read: "His little crib is empty, as is our hearts"
  • The Swiss Lion of Lucerne is a pretty powerful monument. Erected to commemorate the Swiss guards who were massacred during the French Revolution, it has been described as one of the most moving pieces of stone.
  • Graham Chapman's death. Despite John Cleese's eulogy and the rendition of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life", you can tell the other Pythons were all really sad.
  • Somewhere, snuggly placed in the center of England, is the National Memorial Arboretum, a beautiful grove of planted trees dedicated to all those who died in the service of their country. Ranging from the heart-breaking Shot at Dawn, a sculpture of a seventeen year old boy shot for 'cowardice', to the inspiring Polish Forces War Memorial, a dedication to those Poles who served the UK, it's generally a wonderful place...until you see the centerpiece. The Armed Forces Memorial. With sixteen thousand names already inscribed, it's a heartbreaking thing, not only because there's fifteen thousand names waiting to be inscribed, but also because of the dedication and love put into making it - this Troper, who hopes to join the Army in the near future, the entire place is right up there with The Tomb of The Unknown Soldier...
  • This Troper recently visited her aunt in St. Joseph, MO. While there, we went out to a cemetery about 40 minutes away across the Kansas border, thanks to this Troper and her mother's fascination with old cemeteries. After viewing the main attraction- a huge memorial built by a man for his wife, after she passed, which was tearjerking in and of itself- we wandered the cemetery a little... and came across Babyland. 3 rows of graves for babies, most of them not even a year old. What really killed this Troper was when her baby cousin (well, her cousin's son) looked up at the Troper's mom with tears in his eyes and said "Someday my mommy is going to be here and I'll never see her again." Ouch.
  • On an unknown grave in Ireland:

Tears cannot restore her. Therefore I weep.

  • Erich Kastner's epitaph for the destruction of Dresden during WWII: "I was born in the most beautiful city in the world. Even if your father, child, was the richest man in the world, he could not take you to see it, because it does not exist any more... In a thousand years was her beauty built, in one night was it utterly destroyed".
  • A grave this troper read about, somewhere in England, for a brother and sister who died of diphtheria within hours of each other. "They lived together, and played together, and in death they were not divided."
  • Two of my personal favorite memorials are found at Washington National Cathedral:
    • Just off the main Nave of the Cathedral a corner dedicated to Abraham Lincoln. There you can find a statue of Lincoln standing in front of the text of the speech he gave before leaving Illinois to go to the White House, but what I find most moving is this enscription:

Abraham Lincoln
Whose lonely soul
God kindled
Is here remembered
By a people
Their conflict healed
By the truth
That marches on.

    • In one of the chapels in the crypt of the Cathedral, there is a small, slightly grubby-looking bronze plaque that is easy to overlook. On closer examination, it turns out to be in remembrance of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan, her teacher, who are buried together in that room. The reason why the plaque is so grubby-looking is that it's written in English and Braille, and has been rubbed over by fingers so many times that the bronze has been discolored.

The Glorious Dead

  1. ↑ first words of the Kaddish, a Jewish prayer told at mourning rituals
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