Veterans work to clear weed-choked burial ground

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Laboring out of respect for those long departed and since forgotten, a group of aging military veterans has worked for months to clear jungle-like growth from an abandoned cemetery on the edge of the city.

"There's World War I, World War II and even graves from Korean veterans in there," said Cecil Buchanan, a member of American Legion Post 3 and an organizer of the effort to clean up the pentagon-shaped burial ground.

He estimates there could be as many as 1,000 veterans buried at the 3-acre site. Buchanan, a 74-year-old Army veteran, said the cemetery appears to include paupers from a former county home as well as those who died during a 1917 influenza outbreak at Camp Sevier, a World War I Army training base.

The cemetery can hardly be recognized as a burial site because of the intense tangle of shrubs, trees and twisted wisteria vines. Cracked and fallen tombstones -- many bearing military notations -- litter the small portion of partially cleared landscape.

"We had so many vines here, we had to take a chain saw to 'em," said Richard Duncan, 70, a retired Army command sergeant major. "It's rough work for old men like us. ... But it's just heartbreaking to see this."

Instead of being a place of remembrance to honor those who served, the site has become a trash dump and a hideout for drug users and prostitutes, the veterans say with disgust.

"See that one, so sunken in? You can tell it's been dug out and robbed," said Roland Sluder, 78, an Army veteran who fought in southern France and worked on Gen. George Patton's staff in postwar Germany. "It just makes you want to cry. They were probably looking for gold teeth or something."

Sluder pounds the ground with a thin metal spike, searching for buried tombstones or holes once filled by coffins. The group of elderly men step carefully because a misplaced foot can slip an entire leg deep into a grave.

For about four months, the veterans have worked at the site on Saturday mornings. Boy Scouts from several local troops have joined the effort.

The veterans from the American Legion post have cajoled companies such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot and local landscapers into donating tools, lumber, sod and other supplies to help them get the job done.

It's slow work. The vets and Scouts have cleared only a small slice.

A banner hanging among the trees proclaims: "Soldiers cemetery. Volunteers Needed. Sat. 7:30 -12." A few crosses have been put up and a small American flag flutters at the entrance.

There are some civilians' graves among the veterans' tombs. One Scout has repaired a tiny brick wall that surrounds what looks to be a family plot, Sluder said.

"Lula Nesbitt Mayes Oct. 11, 1954" says a stone with the 'N' scrawled backward.

Several gravestones have burial dates as recently as the 1950s. Both whites and blacks appear to be interred in the site.

Buchanan, who carries a notebook with research papers about the site, said care for the cemetery stopped after the state quit using prison labor for such tasks.

The property was sold by the county at least seven times in tax sales and, most probably, no one knew it was a graveyard, he said. The individual who now owns the land has given permission for the site to be cleaned, but Buchanan wants county or state officials to step in, take over the property and pay for the upkeep.

In his campaign to maintain the site, Buchanan said he's written Vice President Dick Cheney, Gov. Mark Sanford and multiple local officials, all to no avail.

Buchanan said a few county officials are sympathetic but insist budgets are tight and they have no money to spare.