Memorial Day, a day to remember and honor the dead, the war heroes who sacrificed their lives to preserve freedom around the world.

Napoleon made his nearly annual trek to Arlington National Cemetery to visit the grave of his war buddy and best friend, 'Scotty' Bob McKenna, with whom he served during the Korean War.

This time his partner the Russian, Kuryakin, took the drive with him.

The blond left Napoleon to his privacy to visit the grave and to place a wreath of flowers in front of the plain white tombstone.

Illya wandered past row upon row of dead, looking at their names and the dates they died. Veterans of so many different wars all neatly put to rest in a beautiful spot that felt so peaceful... a fitting tribute. Heros and everyday soldiers and people were laid to rest together...

He was impressed by the simplicity of the place, the uniformity and the fact that one war was not placed in significance over another.

There were other monuments scattered about for those of importance, as well as an amphitheatre with it's trellis' covered in roses, and gently trickling fountains. It was an amazingly serene setting for so many who had met their end so violently.

He spotted small tokens left by so many graves, all marked by small American flags that fluttered in the breeze. Toys, letters, photographs and messages of love were everywhere. Signs that some were not forgotten, yet he noted there were few visitors.

There was an anti-war sentiment blanketing this country, but he saw no reason why that belief should dismiss the dead.

Illya looked up from one of the headstones, hearing the silence broken by the rhythmic clip-clopping of hooves. He watched as seven graceful, yet powerful horses passed by along the road. Astride four of them were uniformed soldiers mounted straight and tall.

The magnificent white horses seemed to sense the solemnity of their task, drawing a flag-draped casket upon a black casson along the sunlit lane to its place of rest among the fallen.

So many words came to the Russians mind, among them, dignity and sadness...

Illya thought about his own country that had nothing really like it.

In Soviet Union, there existed the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moskva, to him a cold place... where burials had begun back in 1917, with pro-Bolshevik victims of the October Revolution, and there they were buried in mass graves on Red Square.

After the last mass burial made in 1921, funerals on Krasnaya ploshchad' were usually conducted as state ceremonies and reserved as the last honor only for the notable politicians, military leaders, cosmonauts and scientists.

Burials in the ground were eventually halted, with funerals rituals now conducted as interment of cremated ash in the Kremlin wall itself. Actual burials in the ground only resumed again with the great Mikhail Kalinins funeral in 1946.

Still it was reserved for Soviet heroes, and not the everyday man, the soldiers who fought and died in the trenches.

There were of course the mass graves such asKatyn, but they were Stalinist killing fields; nothing like this Arlington...a place to bury and honor the fallen and with such reverent ritual.

Except for the pomp an of official state funeral, death was not a prominent feature of public Soviet reality. Significant members of the Communist Party and members of the Politburo lay in state in the Hall of Columns on Marx Prospect. They were officially mourned for a designated period but their deaths were only of importance because they signaled a change in the relationships of power.

There was little to show that death was a fact of Soviet life. No funeral services were advertised; no obituary columns appeared in newspapers; no black hearses led parades of mourners to the burial.

Cemeteries were hidden behind tall brick walls or at the end of small access roads beyond the city limits. Only in the villages, where the old ways were still clung to, did one occasionally see a small group of elderly people, following a black wooden coffin down a road to the village cemetery.

Moskva had its Alexander Gardens and the "Vechnyy Ogon', the eternal flame memorial built in 1960...there were many such eternal flames scattered across the Soviet Union, but nothing such as this national cemetery here in America and Napoleon had told him this was not the only one in existence.

Illya quietly walked up behind Solo; his eyes filled with marvel at such respect for the 'masses,' as it just did not happen this way in his own country. He was about to say something when his partner turned to him.

"Hey, tovarisch...you and Scotty Bob, my two best friends by my side at last. I wish you could have known him," Napoleon sighed. "I think you would have liked each other. You're both my brothers you know."

"Thank you,my friend," Illya bowed his head slightly," I am honored to be in such great company."

.

* ref " Brothers Old and New"

" Seoul Survivors"

and "In Memoriam"