Every Sunday morning on a stretch of beach near Santa Barbara’s Stearns Wharf and
simultaneously 85 miles south on Santa Monica Beach near the pier an extraordinary
sight appears—an expanse of hundreds of wooden crosses in rank and file,
representing the American servicemen and women killed to date in the Iraq war. Last
Memorial Day weekend, the count stood at 1,657 dead, 26,551 wounded and injured.
This weekly event, known as Arlington West, is a project begun by Santa Barbara
carpenter, Steve Sherrill, who appears in “Beyond Babylon.” The project visually
commemorates the sacrifice of lives in the Iraq war, in a time when government
policy has made the body bags, coffins and even funerals of the American war dead
virtually invisible. The project has been taken up, further developed and maintained by
members of Chapter 54 Veterans for Peace in Santa Barbara and Veterans for
Peace, Los Angeles. Every Sunday at dawn, group members and community
volunteers spend over two hours putting up the display and at sundown, dismantling it
for another week. The installation draws the attention of visitors who come upon it on
their way to the beach as well as current soldiers, veterans and families of loved
ones who died in the war.
The mood of the cemetery in the sand is somber and respectful. A recording of taps
played by a bugler at Arlington National Cemetery plays softly in the background.
Members of the public—children, seniors, joggers, bicyclists, tourists—stop for a
moment to look over the rows of crosses and meditate on the meaning of the sight
For a few hours, the sacrifice of these hundreds of dead American servicemen and
women becomes a personal and visible reality. The crosses stay there until sundown,
but the memory is indelible.
