In an old US Army photograph from May of 1943, locals stack crosses on the edge of a field to mark the graves of US servicemen killed in action in New Guinea. In the background, you can see crosses apparently hastily assembled from sticks marking more graves.

It was not an attempt to Christianize the US military, nor was there an assumption that every US serviceman believed that Jesus Christ was his Savior. Yet today, such grave markers would be considered an affront to atheist sensibilities — to the extent that crosses are pulled down along highways and memorials erected in the US at about the same time have to be saved by the US Supreme Court — where even two Justices thought the cross should be torn down.

Society has changed much since then, it would seem.

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