Will There Never Be Another Unknown Solidier
Will there never be another unknown soldier?
By BILL DUNCAN
The View from Here Column 11/11/05
In America we celebrate Veterans Day this Friday, Nov. 11. When I was growing up, it was called Armistice Day, commemorating the signing of the armistice that ended World War I on November 11 at 11 a.m.
Like 9/11/01 it is burned into our memory, just as the end of World War I was an indelible memory for Americans of that era.
In 1918, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month, the world rejoiced and celebrated the end of four years of bitter warfare in Europe. The “war to end all wars” was over.
In 1921, an unknown World War I American soldier was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Similar burials occurred in England and France, where an unknown soldier was buried in each nation’s highest place of honor. In England, the British soldier is buried in Westminster Abbey. In France, the unknown French soldiers is burried at the Arc de Triomphe.
In America, Armistice Day officially received its name in 1926 through a Congressional resolution. It became a national holiday 12 years later by similar Congressional action. If the idealistic hope had been realized that World War I was “the War to end all Wars,” November 11 might still be called Armistice Day. But only a few years after the holiday was proclaimed, war broke out in Europe, to begin World War II.
America stayed out of the war until another date that will live in infamy — Dec. 7, 1941. Since had been celebrating the end of a war that was to end all wars, Congress had to come up with a new name for the holiday. On June 1, 1954, the name was changed to Veterans Day to honor U.S. veterans of all wars.
Congress even wanted to get entirely away from the Armistice Day theory and in 1968, new legislation changed the national commemoration of Veterans Day to the fourth Monday in October. The constituency didn’t like the change. It soon became apparent, that November 11 was a date of historic significance to many Americans. Therefore, in 1978 Congress returned the observance to its traditional date, but continued to call it Veterans Day.
Perhaps the best known symbol of Armistice Day, now Veterans Day, is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, D.C.
National ceremonies for Veterans Day are centered around the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Because unknown soldiers killed in combat in other wars are buried at the site, the memorial is now known as the Tomb of the Unknowns.
On Memorial Day in 1958, two more unidentified American war dead, one from World War II and the other from the Korean War, were buried with the unknown soldier of World War I.
A 24 hour vigil is kept at the site by an Army honor guard, from the 3d U.S. Infantry. At precisely 11 a.m. on November 11, a combined color guard representing all military services executes “Present Arms” at the tomb. The nation’s tribute to its war dead is symbolized by the laying of a presidential wreath and the playing of “Taps.”
A little known fact about the Tomb of the Unknowns is that one who was interred there as an unknown soldier no longer is buried at the tomb. nor is he unknown.
A law was passed in 1973 providing interment of an unknown soldier from the Vietnam War, but because of the improved technology to identify the dead, unavailable until 1984 an unidentified soldier of the Vietnam war was buried in the tomb. Fourteen years later, however, the unknown Vietnam war soldier was identified through DNA tests as Michael Blassie, a 24-year-old Air Force pilot who was shot down in May of 1972 near the Cambodian border. His body was disinterred and reburied by his family in St. Louis, Missouri.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470, or by going to his blog on the web at www.theduncansonline.com/elderstatesman)