On Hallowed Ground (22 page)

Back in Washington, Gen. Peyton C. March, the army’s wartime chief of staff, shared Pershing’s concerns and urged that “steps be taken to give
publicity to the difficulties attendant on the return of bodies, with a view to creating a sentiment in favor of having all
America’s dead left abroad.”
⁴⁸
A few weeks later, Maj. Gen. Frank McIntyre, March’s executive assistant, prepared a long news release enumerating the reasons
that America’s war dead would be better left in Europe. Citing the Roosevelt family’s example, McIntyre argued that there
was no greater honor than to bury each soldier “where he fell, fighting the foes of civilization, upon a battlefield in France
… What can be a better testimonial to the valor and devotion of her dead sons … than that the Nation should secure
and maintain in perpetuity vast cemeteries in France—cemeteries which, in themselves, with their thousands of graves, will
arouse sentiment and emotions in pilgrims of future generations, which mere monuments can never do?”
⁴⁹

This stirring rhetoric did little to soothe the grief for mothers such as Anna Lupo, who clung to the hope that her son would
return, or for Mrs. L. Mantel of Fairfax, Minnesota, who simply wanted her boy’s body brought home. “He was my only son I
had,” Mrs. Mantel wrote to Newton D. Baker, secretary of war, in December 1919. “I want him to rest on his home soil poor
boy,” she wrote. “Pleas send his body home to us as soon as you can and tell me … how bad he was hert and if he had a
chance to say enything be for he died oh if I could of bin with him … it want seem so hard on me.”
⁵⁰
Another mother, writing from Brooklyn, gave Robert Lansing, secretary of state, a tongue-lashing for leaving her son overseas.
“You took my son from me and sent him to war … My son sacrificed his life to America’s call, and now you
must
as a duty of yours bring my son back to me.”
⁵¹

Many such letters poured into Washington in the months following the armistice. War widows and mothers of servicemen reprised the role women had performed after the
Civil War, when they had organized memorial associations to provide civilized treatment for the war dead. They did so again,
goading leaders to honor the fallen, filling the front rows at public hearings, stalking the halls of Congress—trying to clean
up the mess their men had made. Less philanthropic urges also flourished in this period, as American undertakers organized
the Purple Cross and lobbied for the speedy return of war dead in “a sanitary and recognizable condition.” Their professional
journals shamelessly anticipated a windfall from massive repatriation of the dead.
⁵²

These appeals, the craven with the altruistic, soon swayed deliberations in Washington, where policy makers reached a compromise on repatriations just as the first anniversary of the armistice approached: On
October 29, 1919, the War Department announced that dead servicemen could be returned from Europe to any relative who requested
it, with the government bearing expenses for transport and for burial in one of the national cemeteries; families also had
the option of interring their loved ones in private graveyards.
⁵³
Fallen servicemen remaining in Europe would be transferred to one of eight newly established American cemeteries—Brookwood
in England, Flanders Field in Belgium, and Aisne-Marne, Meuse-Argonne, Oise-Aisne, Somme, St. Mihiel, and Suresnes in France.
Congress quickly approved $5 million for repatriation expenses. Most Americans requested that their loved ones—more than 46,000—be
returned for burial.
⁵⁴
The homecoming project, begun in November 1920, continued until July 1922, when the last wave of World War I dead were put
to rest.
⁵⁵
Some 5,800 were buried in national cemeteries, 5,241 of those at Arlington.
⁵⁶
Another 30,000 stayed in Europe, where they lie today in exquisitely maintained military cemeteries on lands ceded to the
United States by allies.
⁵⁷

March discounted the idea of honoring an anonymous warrior when the suggestion was proposed to him in October 1919 by Brig.
Gen. William D. Connor, commanding officer of American forces in France. Impressed by French plans to bury their
poiluinconnu
under the Arc de Triomphe, Connor urged a similar program for one of the American war dead. March, never one for diplomatic
subtlety or imaginative gestures, dismissed Connor’s suggestion with little discussion.
⁵⁸
The idea languished until Armistice Day a year later, when thousands turned out for emotionally charged ceremonies in London
and Paris to honor unidentified warriors from each country.
⁵⁹
Inspired by the European example, a New York editor named Marie M. Meloney renewed General Connor’s ill-fated proposal in
November 1920.
⁶⁰

“There is in this thing, the way England has done it, the essence of democracy, and the soul of a people,” Mrs. Meloney, editor
of the
Delineator
magazine, wrote to General March.“It is the kind of thing which should have found birth in America. I want you to do the
fine, big human thing that no one else in America has initiated. It is not sob-sister stuff … It is a big strong influence
in the future … It brings patriotism home to men in a personal way.”
⁶¹

March rebuffed her suggestion, just as he had Connor’s a year before. “The problem of Great Britain and France in this matter
is entirely different from ours,” March wrote.“I was informed on my recent trip abroad that there were still over one hundred
thousand unidentified and missing British soldiers, and their unidentified soldier is the representative of a tremendous class.”
By contrast, he pointed out, the number of unidentified and missing Americans (then 4,221) was “very small and constantly
growing smaller.” It was probable, he wrote, that the Graves Registration Service would soon know the names of many more soldiers,
making it impossible to guarantee the anonymity of anyone selected as an unknown. Finally, March wrote, even if such an unknown
could be found, there was no suitable place to put him. “We have no national arch like the Arc de Triomphe, or national building
like Westminster Abbey in which has been interred countless bodies for centuries.” If Congress approved a memorial for the
unknown, however, March indicated that he would support it.
⁶²

Prodded by public sentiment, Congress did just that. Within days of Mrs. Meloney’s approach to General March, the
New York Times
proposed that the government select an unknown for special honors. “His tomb should be a shrine for the Americans of all
the States and all the lands under the flag. And that shrine should be in the National Cemetery at Arlington, where the bravest
lie, men of the South as well as men of the North, who fought for the Stars and Stripes.”
⁶³

Rep. Hamilton Fish of New York, a distinguished army reserve major recently back from the war,
⁶⁴
took up the cause, introducing legislation on December 21, 1920, for the “bringing to the United States of a body of an unknown
American killed on the battle fields of France, and for burial of the remains with appropriate ceremonies.”
⁶⁵
His bill sailed through the House of Representatives but stalled in the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, blocked by
Newton D. Baker, secretary of war. Parroting General March’s earlier objections, Baker warned that Fish’s gesture was premature.
Dead servicemen were being identified daily, raising the possibility that in time, there might be no Unknown Soldier from
World War I. Why bury one now, Baker argued, only to suffer the embarrassment of digging him up later?
⁶⁶

Baker’s resistance crumbled under the growing weight of newspaper editorials, lobbying from the American Legion, importuning
from war mothers, and support from popular military leaders such as Gen. John J. Pershing and Marine Commandant John A. Lejeune,
both of whom stepped forward to speak for the Unknown Solider.
⁶⁷

“I favor the idea,” Pershing told the House Committee on Military Affairs on February 2, 1921. “It is a fitting tribute for
the nation to pay, not only to its unknown dead, but to all who gave their lives or risked their lives in France. There has
been no national expression since the war ended to give the people an opportunity to show their appreciation.” Yielding to
the inevitable, Nelson Baker reversed course, backed the proposal, and even predicted that the unknown’s grave would become
“the Westminster Abbey of America’s heroic dead.”
⁶⁸

Once it was clear that Congress intended to adopt legislation, there was a flurry of discussion about where the Unknown Soldier
should be buried. One group of legislators proposed placing him in a crypt—originally designed for but never occupied by George
Washington—under the Capitol Rotunda.
⁶⁹
The
New York Times
, abandoning its earlier argument for Arlington, heartily endorsed this new suggestion. “All America finds its way to the
Capitol, many Americans never go to Arlington, which, being a military cemetery … can hardly be the ‘Westminster Abbey
of America’s heroic dead.’”
⁷⁰
Rodman Wanamaker, philanthropist and department store magnate, urged Congress to bury the Unknown in Central Park. “Those
privileged to leave us to fight for the freedom of the world embarked from the harbor of New York,” Wanamaker wrote to the
House military committee. “Those who had the privilege of living returned home through this harbor. It was in New York City
… that the nation’s welcome was given to the returning victorious troops, and it is the place above all others hallowed
as the shrine for the spirit that never returned … Millions and millions of people will constantly be desirous of paying
tribute to this hallowed ground who never will be able to visit any other city.”
⁷¹

Unimpressed by Wanamaker’s logic, and perhaps concerned about converting the Capitol Rotunda into a mausoleum, Congress determined
that Arlington was the proper place for the Unknown Soldier, who would rest among thousands of his comrades in the Virginia
hills. Legislation authorizing the warrior’s enshrinment at Arlington passed on February 4, 1921. By this time, President
Woodrow Wilson, enfeebled by a stroke, humbled by the Republican electoral sweep of 1920, and humiliated by the Senate’s rejection
of his Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations Covenant, had barely a month left in the White House. In his last hours
there on March 4, 1921, the president who had so grudgingly sent so many young Americans into battle put his rickety signature
to Public Resolution 67, which would bring one of them back to Arlington. Thus began the Unknown Soldier’s long journey home.
⁷²

Clearing Europe’s battlefields after the war, the Army had gone to extraordinary lengths to identify dead Americans, reducing
the percentage of unknowns to a fraction of their number from any previous conflict. Now the War Department reversed course,
issuing orders for the Quartermaster Corps to find an unknown solider who was a combat fatality, buried in France, positively
known to be American, and selected “so as to preclude the remotest possibility of future identification as to his name, rank,
organization, service or the battlefield on which he fell,” according to orders from Brig. Gen. William Lassiter, assistant army chief of staff.
⁷³

Receiving these instructions in September 1921, a special quartermaster’s team in France had just over a month to locate the
Unknown Solider, who was to be the honored guest for Armistice Day at Arlington on November 11. While preparations went forward
on the home front, officers pored over burial records in Paris, where the Graves Registration Service had prepared extensive
files for each of the American dead. Even unknown servicemen were assigned an individual grave number, which appeared in their
file, along with particulars of their burial, and in many instances, postmortem dental records. From this archive, the army
selected four candidates and four alternates for whom no identifying details were evident in the record.
⁷⁴
The goal was to ensure the anonymity of the Unknown Soldier, precluding later identification and allowing every grieving
family to believe that the repatriated soldier might be a missing loved one.

Lt. Col. G. V. S. Quackenbush, supervising the recovery operation, assigned four specialty teams to unearth a pool of candidates
for Unknown Soldier from American cemeteries at Aisne-Marne, Meuse-Argonne, Somme, and St. Mihiel. Each venue had been the
scene of fierce fighting during the war. Arriving at these cemeteries, each disinterment detail found a gray steel casket
and a wooden shipping crate waiting for them, with all identifying markings removed from the boxes. Each casket was “thoroughly
cleaned and polished and put in absolutely first-class condition in every particular,” according to orders from Quackenbush,
who left nothing to chance.
⁷⁵

“Should there be anything found on the body or in the coffin which will tend to identify this particular body, an alternate
body, for which the required forms have been prepared, will be then exhumed and similarly searched,” Quackenbush directed.“The
body will be prepared according to regulations—wrapped in a blanket and placed in a special casket provided for this purpose.
No marks whatsoever will be placed on the body, casket or shipping case. The metallic lining will be screwed down but no asphaltum
paint will be used on the rubber gasket. The casket top will then be placed on the casket and the shipping case lid attached
by only six (6) screws, which will allow the ready opening of the shipping case when the body arrives at its destination.”
All four teams did their work, loaded their dead comrades onto trucks, draped each shipping case with an American flag, and
converged upon the village square of Châlons-sur-Marne at three p.m. on October 23. Here the final selection of the Unknown
was to be made.
⁷⁶