Internet serves as new outlet to honor, grieve for fallen soldiers, disaster victims

It is easier for friends and family to interact with online memorials.

McClatchy Newspapers

RALEIGH, N.C. — A decade ago, it was enough to carve their names in granite or freeze their likenesses in bronze to stand against time. Now, the fallen of America’s military are also being memorialized in electronic ether.

Since the war in Afghanistan began, traditional monuments have been joined by dozens of Internet sites that offer new ways to remember, honor or simply learn about fallen troops. Some sites are elaborate, offering not only individual stories culled from the media about every U.S. service member killed, but even the ability to do things such as figure out how many were lost in each province of Iraq. Others are simple lists of the names or a tribute to a single dead service member.

Memorials are, essentially, a response to fears about the fragile nature of human memory, said Edward Linenthal, editor of the Journal of American History and an author of books on the Holocaust Museum and the cultural aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing.

In theory, the digital format could preserve those fragile memories forever, or at least much longer than monuments of stone. The information is also perilously delicate, vulnerable to deletion with a keystroke.

The sites are part of a growing pantheon of memorial sites to the dead of conflicts, natural disasters and other causes. Memorial Web sites about U.S. military casualties started popping up well before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A Vietnam site called The Virtual Wall was started in 1997, for instance. The latest wars, though, coincided with rapid growth in the popularity of the Internet and a trend toward online grieving led by digital obituaries.

The phenomenon reflects a growing desire to not only observe memorials, but also to shape and interact with them. For years now, visitors have left mementos at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and taken rubbings of names from it.

These new forms of remembering probably won’t replace more traditional monuments, he said, but will complement them.

Some are little more than lists of names or a MySpace page; others are elaborate digital shrines with touches including media stories about the dead and ways to post eulogies, notes of condolence, photos, even audio recordings. Some include entries for all the dead, and the ability to search by things like name, home state or rank.

The tribute page at Legacy.com’s memorial site for the dead of the two wars is one of the most elaborate.

The section there for Gunnery Sgt. Darrell W. Boatman, 38, of Fayetteville, N.C., has attracted more than 170 entries in his guest book fatally injured by a bomb while serving with the Marines west of the Iraqi city of Fallujah.