Veterans were forced to remove American flags from the graves of fallen soldiers Wednesday, The Jackson Sun reports.
The flags were placed by members of the 1848 post of the VFW.
“We’ve been doing this for 25 years, and we’ve never had to pick them up before,” said Jon Harrison, who helped place the flags in honor of Memorial Day Weekend. “I think it’s a disrespect to our fallen veterans not to be able to leave the flags here.”
The Post placed the flags on veterans’ graves at Highland Memorial Gardens and Ridgecrest Cemetery on Saturday morning. But the VFW was told that they would have to remove the flags by Wednesday. The cemeteries are both owned by a company called StoneMor in Pennsylvania.
“We placed 856 flags total,” Harrison said. “We walk every row of the cemetery. Every year we come out — it probably is the only attention the gravesite receives that year.”
Company Spokesperson Frank Millis has stated that StoneMor “does not have a specific policy regarding when flags can be removed…we ask that [the flags] be removed prior to the next mowing schedule…it’s more for maintenance than anything else.”