Edition: U.S. / Global

The Nation: War Memorials; Putting Out Fewer Flags

Published: May 20, 2001

WORLD War I was so vile that nobody expected to see anything like it ever again. The lads who marched into fire, bombs, mud and poisonous gas would never be forgotten.

Or would they? In tens of thousands of parks, traffic triangles and cemeteries in every corner of America, World War I memorials are crumbling faster than they can be shored up by people who consider them sacred, even as the events they mourn, praise and implicitly question fade deeper into the mist.

The Great War solved nothing, proving only that humans, acting in organized fashion, could kill one another more efficiently than ever dreamed. As the lamps were going out all over Europe, according to one contemporary phrase, young men marched off singing, ''Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile.''

Most of the American dead were buried near the fields of battle. So their friends and families built shrines near the fields where they hit baseballs and held the hands of pretty girls. These tributes -- including three clustered within a few square blocks in Brooklyn -- were meant to be eternal.

But eternity is elusive.

In the Cherry Esplanade of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the long stately rows of maples have a disturbing gap. Ten failing trees had to be removed this spring, as will the remaining 70. A sign says that scarlet oaks, signifying nothing but beauty, will fill the ranks.

The original trees marked the World War I Armistice. So did other trees outside, along elegant Eastern Parkway. Once, hundreds of plaques at the trees' bases, each 4 inches by 9 inches, honored individual dead. Many were stolen or damaged. Most of those remaining, some 230, were stored.

Inexplicably, three beat-up plaques remain to declare that Albert T. Restaino, William H. Lefkowitz and Harry M. Cundy perished in the war to end all wars.

Just a few blocks away, in Prospect Park, an honor roll lists the 2,400 Brooklyn youths killed in the war. On Sept. 22, 1918, Dorothy Heffernan dropped a single flower petal as each name was called in what became a running tally. Smaller groups of friends and families would regularly assemble to add new names to the roll.

After the war ended, the grim list, first written on wood, became permanent marble tablets behind a statue of the Angel of Death hugging a weary soldier.

The program for the monument's dedication on June 26, 1921, reads: ''Before the lake it stands, the trees bending gracefully over it so that when the turmoil of the times has stilled and the people look back on that period of stress and travail, there will be lessons in love, in heroism, in sacrifice, right doing, right thinking and nobility of spirit.''

Perhaps. But the more obvious lesson is that time passes, and things deteriorate. People forget. Two of the six plaques are no longer there, and the once proud monument sorely needs work.

It has been more than 82 years since the Armistice, longer than lives of maple trees, and few alive ever met any of the nearly 4.3 million Americans who served, much less the 116,516 who perished. Just 2,416 vets remain, fewer than 20 in Brooklyn.

Rose Coomb's definitive 1976 study of World War I battlefields noted that people and places wereforgotten when memorial markers disappeared, as battlefields were converted into farms and bomb blast holes became fishing ponds. She called these shadow memorials. It is like the gap in the trees of the Brooklyn garden: How do you see what is no longer visible?

The biggest shadow memorial may soon be in Chicago. It is Soldier Field, dedicated to the World War I dead on Armistice Day 1925. The City Council voted 35-3 in April to let the Chicago Bears change the name of a remodeled stadium to whatever the highest bidder wants. ''All those soldiers?'' The Chicago Tribune asked in editorial. ''No problem. They're dead.''

Soon the last doughboy will shuffle down some Main Street. The little stories, like those of Charles Molcar, who lived in Chicago for most of his life, will meld into a larger story that is ever harder to recall. When the 105-year-old veteran, a lifelong Bears fan, died in April, his obituary told how he loved to tell everyone that he paid cash for the 11 cars and three homes he bought in his lifetime.

Clearly, loose ends must be tied up soon. One is deciding whether to give Henry Johnson, 104, a Medal of Honor. Despite the backing of the secretary of the Army, the chairman of the joint chiefs has nixed the Albany man's nomination, in part because there are no eyewitnesses. Editorials across the country have deplored the decision.

Not all World War I monuments have been forgotten. Indianapolis installed four gold eagles on its grand plaza this spring, and restoration is planned on Kansas City's Liberty Memorial. Sometimes, veterans of later wars fight for their forebears' memory, as they have in saving a bronze doughboy in front of a Brooklyn armory.

Tom Fox, a Vietnam veteran, worked to preserve a World War I monument on Manhattan's West Side two decades ago. Now, he is a leader in a $7 million reconstruction of the Vietnam memorial in downtown Manhattan. Mindful of the World War I lessons, organizers are including detailed maps and histories so new generations might understand.

''We want it to be more than just names on a wall,'' he said.

Photos: General John J. Pershing reviewed troops in Manhattan in 1919. (Associated Press); Two plaques are missing from a World War I memorial in Brooklyn. (Ruby Washington/The New York Times)