Read On Hallowed Ground Online
Authors: Robert M Poole
On Hallowed Ground (23 page)
With solemn ceremony, the flag-draped shipping boxes were conveyed into the Hôtel de Ville, or City Hall. Flags were drawn
from each case, caskets were taken out, and each case turned over to serve as a bier. Recovery teams surrendered the original
cemetery files and exhumation forms to an officer who burned the records on the spot to prevent any possibility of later identification.
After these preliminaries were completed, the doors to City Hall were opened to receive local officials and townspeople, who
streamed in with flowers, lingered before the caskets, murmured blessings, crossed themselves, wept openly, and moved slowly
away. When darkness fell that night, guards closed the room and, acting on orders, rearranged the caskets so that it would
be impossible to tell their cemeteries of origin. The doors were reopened; a combined detail of French and American sentinels
marched in and stood watch until the morning of October 24.
The town square of Châlons filled with dignitaries, curious citizens, and soberly dressed neighbors who came to offer their
respects. One of these townsmen, Brasseur Bruffer, who had lost two sons in the war, appeared with a bouquet of white roses.
He presented these to Maj. Robert B. Harbold, chief of quartermaster operations in the field, who passed the flowers to Sgt.
Edward F. Younger, a twice-wounded veteran of every major American offensive of the war. Younger was given the honor of choosing
the Unknown from among the four candidates in the holding room. A French military band struck up a hymn in the courtyard,
while Younger entered the room to make his choice. Still clutching the roses, he slowly walked among the caskets. “I passed
the first one … the second,” he recalled. “Then something made me stop. And a voice seemed to say, ‘This is a pal of yours.’
I don’t know how long I stood there. But finally I put the roses on the second casket and went back into the sunlight.” The
choice was made.
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Officers lifted the newly designated Unknown Soldier and carried him into the main hall where a catafalque had been set up,
and with the help of a mortician, they transferred the serviceman’s remains to a new casket, made of ebony and decorated with
silver. The coffin was then sealed and locked.
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Monsieur Bruffer’s roses were placed on the lid, where an engraved plaque described the occupant: “An Unknown American Soldier
Who Gave His Life in the Great War.”
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The Unknown’s old casket was returned to the holding room, where bodies were shuffled once more to confound any chance of
identification. One of the three remaining candidates was removed from his coffin and put into the one just vacated by the
Unknown. As soon as this was done, the three bodies in the holding room were secured in their caskets, returned to their shipping
crates, covered with flags, and driven to the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery. There, as the familiar strains of Taps sounded in the
waning light, they were buried in Graves No. 1, 2, and 3, Row 1, Block G of the American cemetery, where they remain today.
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By caisson and train, through silent throngs and deepening autumn, the Unknown Solider made his slow progress across France,
through champagne country and blood-soaked battlefields, around sleeping Paris, and finally down to the great port of Le Havre,
where well-wishers crowded the pier, bands played “The Star Spangled Banner,” and the cruiser U.S.S.
Olympia
, which had been Admiral Dewey’s flagship at the Battle of Manila, waited to receive the Unknown. From the knot of officials
crowded at quayside, one Frenchman stepped out, limped across the paving stones on a war-shattered leg, and paused before
the Unknown’s casket.
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“The whole of France bows down with me before your coffin,” said André Maginot, minister of pensions and later war minister
of France.
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“Brother from America,” he said, “they can take you back to the great land from which you came, but your French family will
always piously preserve your memory and the land of France will not forget that it was to it you entrusted your last dreams.”
Maginot knelt to place his country’s highest tribute, the Cross of the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, on the Unknown’s
casket, the first of many awards he would receive.
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As the afternoon shadows lengthened on October 25, 1921, the Army’s body bearers lifted their comrade, marched him up the
gangway of
Olympia
, and entrusted him to the care of six sailors and two marines, who took the Unknown aboard and settled him on the stern,
where schoolchildren blanketed his casket with flowers. By three twenty p.m., it was time to go.
Olympia
nosed into the harbor and, escorted by the destroyer
Reuben James
and eight French vessels, turned for home. One of the French destroyers boomed a farewell salute of seventeen guns, fired
with sober deliberation and answered by
Olympia
in exact order. It might have been a punctuation mark denoting the end of Europe’s long trial and the beginning of hope that
some good might come of it.
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While
Olympia
and her escort steamed across the Atlantic, teams frantically prepared for the Unknown’s homecoming at Arlington. Working
against the clock, laborers burrowed twenty feet under one of the plantation’s most prominent hills to excavate a vault to
the south of the old Lee mansion. Set on massive concrete footings, the chamber opened by way of a connecting shaft to the
white marble plaza of the new Memorial Amphitheater, completed in 1920. Here on a broad terrace facing east across the Potomac
River, the Unknown’s sarcophagus, carved from the same Colorado stone as the Greek-inspired amphitheater, was erected over
the hillside vault. The tomb on the hill was simple to the point of austerity, consisting of a rectangular plinth a few feet
high, surmounted by a smaller rectangular collar, and crowned with a capstone with curved edges. It was considered a temporary
structure until something grander could be built, which would take another decade to accomplish.
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Meanwhile, there was the matter of a fitting epitaph. Caught up in the patriotic spirit of the times, the public flooded the
War Department with suggestions for an inscription for the new tomb. In the manner of those days, most of these literary offerings
were syrupy concoctions, such as the one served up by Anais O’C. Pugh in “The Silent Soldier”:
Oh! Mothers! Daughters! Sweethearts! Wives!
Greave not, but wipe thy tear!
Your boy has won, who sleeping lies
On Yonder sacred bier!
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Lucia R. Maxwell, describing herself as a Daughter of the Confederacy, confirmed with her poem that sectional feelings had
improved:
Lift up your head, Columbia
And fling your banner high;
For its starry fold and stripes so old
Your soldiers will fight and die.
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Arthur Pew, consulting engineer for waterworks and sewerage in Atlanta, submitted an original work entitled “A Requiem for
the Boys who went to France, and were brought Home only to be re-interred,” which was of epic length and reminded readers
that,
Bright tho the field of France, Homeland is best.
Here midst thy loving friends, Rest, soldier, rest.
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This contribution landed in the adjutant general’s office on November 4, 1921—regrettably too late, Brig. Gen. Peter C. Harris
informed Mr. Pew, to be considered for Armistice Day ceremonies. His verse was filed away with that of other literary aspirants
and mercifully forgotten.
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The tomb’s final inscription would not be unveiled for more than a decade.
As the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month drew closer, soldiers at Fort Myer drilled for the forthcoming
ceremonies, fretted over the inevitable peacetime force reductions, and helped to fill new rows at Arlington with a steady
stream of dead comrades who had been repatriated from Europe that autumn.
Any casual observer might have noticed a small but significant change in graveside ceremonies at Arlington, where those in
uniform no longer removed their hats to honor to a dead soldier, sailor, or marine. Instead, servicemen kept their hats on,
or in military parlance, “remained covered,” thanks to an eminently practical suggestion from H. Allen Griffith, an Army chaplain
who tired of seeing his friends and colleagues die from their gallant behavior at funerals.
“Having for the last eighteen years officiated at a larger number of military funerals,” the Rev. Mr. Griffith reported to
Secretary of War Nelson D. Baker, “I have become more and more impressed with the danger incurred by the men standing with
bared heads during the services. Large numbers of men, especially in the Soldiers Home, are afflicted with thin locks and
bald heads, and in the cold rainy weather, there can be no question but that large numbers have contracted colds that have
led to chronic sickness or speedy death. There is nothing military in this old custom of ‘hats off,’” he reported, perhaps
remembering the late Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s fatal gesture of respect for Gen. William T. Sherman a few years
before.
Griffith suggested that instead of “uncovering” at funerals, those servicemen in attendance might simply salute. In a surprise
move for a service known for resisting innovation, Gen. Peyton C. March issued Army Circular No. 286 on March 24, 1920, with
new rules for military funerals. From that time, men in uniform were directed to “stand at attention covered,” according to
March. “During prayer they will bow the head. While the casket is being carried to the grave, and while ‘Taps’ is being sounded
they will stand at the salute. They will salute the passing of the casket in any military funeral at any time or place.”
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Officers at Fort Myer, eager to acquit themselves at forthcoming ceremonies for the Unknown, began to worry that Arlington’s
regularly scheduled funerals might throw off their preparations for the big day. Of particular concern, Brig. Gen. William
Lassiter warned, was the flood of other dead servicemen being repatriated at the rate of seventy-five to a hundred per week.
Each of the returning dead required an individual escort who had to be detached from Fort Myer and sent to the receiving port
at Hoboken, New Jersey, to accompany the remains to Washington, where the deceased warrior would be buried at Arlington or returned to his family.
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“A shipment is due here on October 21 … requiring 69 men as escorts,” Lassiter warned the War Department on October 9.
“There will be two other shipments that would ordinarily arrive here between that date and November 11, 1921. The Quartermaster
General states that the relatives of these last two shipments have not been notified and that the bodies could be held at
Hoboken until after November 11.” Lassiter proposed that these dead servicemen be detained at Hoboken so that men at Fort
Myer could concentrate on training “in order to present a creditable appearance on November 11.” His request was granted.
The dead piled up in New Jersey without the knowledge of their loved ones, who had already endured years of waiting for their
return. In deference to the Unknown Solider, they would have to wait a few weeks more.
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Long before
Olympia
reached Washington on the drizzling afternoon of November 9, 1921, her approach could be marked by the dull, distant thud of artillery, as forts
and posts down the river saluted her passage and she answered, gun for gun, sailing the same course so many hospital ships
had followed in the dark days of Civil War. The salutes grew louder until suddenly
Olympia
broke into view, a gray ship ghosting out of a gray mist and turning slowly upstream for the Navy Yard. At her rails stood
silent, dripping bluejackets in rigid lines; at her stern, an honor guard of marines and sailors kept vigil over the flag-draped
casket protected by a canvas awning; on shore, a mounted band formed ranks on restless horses; beside them, a regiment of
cavalry drew their sabers and stiffened, eyes forward, caps streaming rain. The great ship slid into place at precisely eight
bells, announced by the vessel’s double chime.
Olympia
’s marine guard filed solemnly down the gangway, turned to face the cavalry, and stood to attention as the boatswain piped
the Unknown over the side, his casket borne down the ramp, and back to American soil with all the honors due an Admiral of
the Fleet.
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The band struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Monsieur Brasseur’s white roses, shriveled and dried from their Atlantic crossing,
stayed with the Unknown as he passed from the care of the Navy into the hands of Army bearers, who slow-walked the casket
over slick cobblestones and strapped it onto a waiting caisson. The cavalry escort moved into place, six black horses strained
in their harness, and to the tune of “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” the caisson clattered down a winding drive lined by marine
guards standing like statues in the rain.
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The light was fading when the caisson rolled up to Capitol Hill, where body bearers stepped forward, shouldered the Unknown’s
remains, and trudged up the marble steps. Inside, under the soaring Rotunda dome that had sheltered Lincoln, L’Enfant, McKinley,
and other honored figures lying in state, the Unknown’s comrades eased him down for the night, with his head pointed toward
France, his feet toward Arlington.
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From his arrival in Washington, he would never be alone. Sentinels stood watch through two nights, relieved at regular intervals by their comrades. President
Warren G. Harding brought flowers, as did Chief Justice and former President William Howard Taft, Vice President Calvin Coolidge,
General Pershing, and other dignitaries. Some came bearing fresh roses from England; some, poppies from the bloody soil of
Flanders. King George V of Britain sent a wreath with a biblical inscription on the ribbon: “As Unknown, yet well known; As
dying, and behold, we live.”
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