The Iron Range (Minnesota) Veterans Memorial Committee approached sculptor Gareth Andrews and asked him to create a sculptural monument in bronze for a memorial park to be established in Virginia, Minnesota. The committee wanted life sized figures of all five branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. They wanted the figures to depict warriors from WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and Persian Gulf, and adding the unifying symbols of the American Bald Eagle and Old Glory, our Stars and Stripes. He presented to them,Shoulder to Shoulder Even the Fallen Stand Tall. In this sculpture , each of the branches finds its representative in a different one of the five conflicts, thus becoming something of a human time capsule: what would have been grandfathers, fathers, sons and grandsons (and their female siblings) over an eighty to one hundred year period are here, all caught agelessly together, united in a moment of time and space in a single act. An army Doughboy of WWI, his own Springfield M1903 service rifle slung on his shoulder and his wash pan helmet on the ground between his feet, reaches to hang an empty WWII/Korean issue helmet on the butt of a Garand MI rifle bayoneted into the ground. Wounded head wrapped in rags, the war to end all wars figure marks the fallen of the war which followed. He is supported on the shoulders of a Vietnam era nurse and Marine...(A young Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969), privy to discussions leading to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles ending WWI, was very disillusioned by the harshness of the victors toward the vanquished Germany. Though he respected President Wilson and the U.S. as the only voices calling for mercy in the peace settlements following Armistice, he would as an old man, forty to fifty years later, collide with us in Vietnam. Had mercy prevailed in 1918 France, maybe Vietnam would not have been the battlefield of the 1960s, still bearing some of the burden of WWI)....Under the covering wing (half folded) a WWII Coast Guardsman pulls from the waves his comrade in securing the shipping lanes above and below the waters, A Merchant Marine of the same era. To the other side of the trio at the point of this mix-matched squad, along the spread wing, stands a Korean War sailor keeping the deck of his foothold in the Yellow Sea from burning out from under him; a WWII aviator ( the women's Air Ferrying Squadron WAFS and women's Air Service Pilots WASP ) without whom the first two years of our part in the air war would have crashed and burned ; and finally an Air force Pilot quickly disposes of the silk that saved his life, but now threatens to betray his whereabouts in the Persian Gulf. The object of their shared focus is the marker in the field for one fallen, one of our own. These eight individuals stand loosely shoulder to-shoulder; around one leg of a large eagle, an unbroken chain across the years, which in truth they shared in purpose and sacrifice. The eagle is much larger than life, as he represents us all in whatever roles we play in the keeping of America. He back drops this small squad of warriors, rising above them, breast straining, head thrown back beak wide in full cry of agony and ecstasy, of victory and great loss. One wing is spread wide the other bent in a covering fashion. The eagle's back is in various stages of transformation from feather to flag. From the small feathers of the head and neck, a field of stars cascades down the shoulders.