War may not be the "father of all things," but it is a great mover and transformer of societies. Individual experiences of war, either in combat or on the home front, constitute the traumatic basis for collective memory and narratives of both glory and victory on the one hand, or suffering, humiliation and abuse on the other hand for many societies. Individual memories transition into a hegemonic narrative, a process that is often violent, manipulative, and oppressive in itself. How societies remember war is an important element in the shaping of collective identities. In extension, this memory forms a crucial foundation for nationalist narratives. In Arab societies, wars such as World War I, the Arab-Israeli wars, the Iran-Iraq war, or the Algerian war of independence, as well as armed conflicts such as the Syrian and Palestinian revolts and the nakba - to name only a few - form a crucial basis for shared Arab nationalist but also particular local remembrance. This paper explores how this remembrance is acted out in a physical and a performative sense, focusing on war memorials, their justification and interpretation in public discourse, and their "usage" by both the elites of states and the populace. Sources will relate to the architecture and artwork of "Unknown Soldier" (or "shuhada'") memorials, military museums, and memorials for victims of war and armed conflict, as well as their manifestation in text (inscriptions, captions, newspapers, catalogues and leaflets). In this paper, I will focus on Syria and Iraq as case studies, with references to a number of other Arab countries. The Damascus military museum, which establishes an Arab military narrative from the crusades, over the "glorious performance" of the Syrian army in the October war, to the 1987 Syrian-Soviet space mission, presents a different kind of memory than the accusatory posture of the Basra war memorial, where bronze statues of Iraqi fallen soldiers point their fingers across the Shatt al-Arab to Iran. Public memories and hegemonic narratives are also great silencers of the individual voice and the "other". To counter this, the paper will therefore also highlight dissident and counter narratives, such as Kurdish memorials of the Anfal campaign, in order to further contextualize and complicate memories of war.