MEMORIAL MONUMENTS

For most of human history war memorials were erected to commemorate great victories. Remembering the dead was a secondary concern. Indeed in Napoleon's day the dead were shoveled into mass, unmarked graves. The Arc de Triomphe  in Paris or Nelson's Column in London contain no names of those killed. By the end of the nineteenth century it was common for regiments in the British Army to erect monuments to their comrades who had died in small Imperial Wars and these memorials would list their names. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 was the first war in Europe in which rank-and-file soldiers were commemorated in war memorials. Every soldier was granted a permanent resting-place as part of the terms of the Treaty of Frankfurt (1871). By the early twentieth century some towns and cities in the United Kingdom raised the funds to commemorate the men from their communities who had fought and died in the Second Anglo-Boer War. However it was after the great losses of the First World War that commemoration took center stage and most communities erected a war memorial listing those men and women who had gone to war and not returned.

In modern times the main intent of war memorials is not to glorify war, but to honor those who have died

In the United States, war and battle monuments have been erected since the French and Indian Wars. There are Memorial Markers in practically every City and Town in the U.S. Our focus in the sub pages of this section will be on Vietnam War Monuments, but we will also feature some noteworthy monuments of other wars and conflicts.

Considered to be the first Vietnam Memorial in the United States, the Memorial at Vietnam Memorial State Park near Angel Fire, New Mexico was dedicated on May 22, 1971. The Vietnam Veterans marker in Jacksonville, dedicated in 1974, may be the oldest in Florida.