Those who’ve never been to war can’t grasp the gist of it. If they’re done right, military museums let you come close. Here, then, is a pair of those museums:
Head down to Columbus, Georgia to Fort Benning, and the National Infantry Museum and Soldier Center. See life-sized dioramas depicting world-changing battles such as Yorktown and Normandy. See how young men are molded into warriors at The Benning Gallery. Watch the Gulf War unfold in The Sole Superpower Gallery and immerse yourself in how the Army’s mission has changed since that cool, at first ordinary Tuesday morning ten Septembers past.
Up the East Coast, just of I-95 in northern Virginia, is The National Museum of the Marine Corps and Heritage Center. Sited on 135 acres of land adjacent to Marine Corps Base Quantico, you can see the top of the striking structure from the freeway, evoking the raising of the flag at Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. For a moment you look up and ask, ‘What is that?’ Then you know.
Better fathom the price these men and women have paid over the years, and the pride they share in being called Marines. Cutting-edge multimedia takes you to the beach at Iwo Jima, through a frigid night watch in Korea, to a ‘hot’ landing zone in a place they once called South Vietnam.
Find out just what these people go through in The Making Marines Gallery, what it takes to be referred to as ‘The Few, The Proud, The Marines.’
None of what you’ll encounter at Benning or Quantico is hype. This is not a war movie. It’s real – an attempt to better connect the nation to those who give so much, so often, to keep her free.
Story by Jerry Chandler
(Image: National Museum of the Marine Corps)
