A late spring nor’easter dumped 2 inches of rain on Newport Thursday. Not exactly the best weather for an outdoor display of over 7,000 combat boots.
“They’ve been out there for nine years, and they’re beginning to show their wear and tear and weather like this does not help,” Erik Wallin, executive director of Operation Stand Down Rhode Island, said Thursday afternoon as rain and heavy winds swept through the state.
But then combat boots are designed for rough terrain, extreme weather, and heavy-duty use. And the boots on display in the Boots on the Ground for Heroes Memorial are holding up thanks to the TLC from Operation Stand Down staff and hundreds of volunteers. The memorial opened Friday morning under cloudy skies at Fort Adams State Park in Newport.
Each boot in the memorial organized by Operation Stand Down has a U.S. flag and a tag with the name and photo of a fallen service member killed in action since 9/11 in the Global War on Terror.
The memorial remains open to the public for viewing 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Sunday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Monday. Admission is free.
The boots are organized alphabetically and by state and U.S. territories. Visitors often leave coins on the boots, some are symbolic of a personal connection to the soldier, sailor, Marine or Coast Guard personnel who died. A quarter could mean you were with the service member when they died; a dime that you served with the deceased; a nickel that you were at basic training together; and a penny that you visited and paid your respects and thanked the veteran for their service.
With the exception of the possibility of a passing late afternoon shower Friday and a lesser chance on Saturday, Wallin is thankful the National Weather Service forecasts calls for a dry Sunday and Memorial Day.
The memorial has been installed each year at Fort Adams since 2019. One year, it rained throughout the holiday weekend and into the following days so the boots could not dry out. Wallin said the boots had to be hauled to the Rhode Island Army National Guard Armory in Warwick to dry out.
The boots spend most of the year stored in a trailer. But this past Monday, Operation Stand Down staff drew the grid on the field inside Fort Adams. Over 200 volunteers helped place the boots and flags over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday.
“There was a little bit of mold on them,” Wallin said.
Not anymore though. Among the volunteers who came to help set up the memorial this week, the East Providence High School football team helped clean boots.
“We’re tremendously blessed, all of us at Operation Stand Down,” Wallin said. “It’s very moving to see a hundred volunteers show up on any one day, both as a tribute to those who have fallen and it’s a tremendous recognition of people appreciating the sacrifice and service of our U.S. military.
This year there are exactly 7,326 boots, the same number on display last year, Wallin said. More boots are added each year if additional U.S. service members are killed in action in war operations under the specific criteria of the Department of Defense.
Each fallen hero is represented by a single boot except for the 29 Rhode Island service members killed who are each honored with a pair of boots. A separate circle with pairs of desert tan boots pays tribute to the fallen veterans from Rhode Island.
The rest of the boots are black, acquired through military surplus a decade ago. Since then, the Defense Department has switched over to desert tan boots.
“Unfortunately these have been part of the memorial now for over nine years, and they do begin to show their age,” Wallin said. “We’re kind of at that vector point of having to make a decision about going out and investing in an entirely new set.”
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
