Younger selected the Unknown by placing a spray of white roses on one of the caskets. Younger of Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 50th Infantry, American Forces in Germany, received the honor of selecting which one of the four would represent all World War I unidentified military personnel. The caskets arrived at the city hall of Ch‚lons-sur-Marnes, France, on Oct. military personnel were exhumed from four different American military cemeteries in France.
The tomb would be constructed on the Memorial Amphitheater’s plaza. On March 3, the United States Congress approved the burial of an unidentified American serviceman from World War I, and President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Congressional Joint Resolution the next day. The purpose of the legislation was “to bring home the body of an unknown American warrior who in himself represents no section, creed, or race in the late war and who typifies, moreover, the soul of America and the supreme sacrifice of her heroic dead.”ġ921: The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Is established proposed legislation that provided for the repatriation and interment of one unknown American soldier at a special tomb to be built at Arlington National Cemetery this single unknown would represent all unidentified and missing American service members from World War I. In December 1920, New York Congressman and World War I veteran Hamilton Fish Jr. Unidentified remains, however, were not repatriated. The United States, by contrast, did repatriate bodies at the request of service members’ families, if the remains could be identified. Instead, to ease the grief of their citizens, France and Great Britain each repatriated and buried one unknown soldier on Armistice Day, Nov. Here is a brief timeline of the Tomb’s first 100 years.ĭuring World War I, our allies France and Great Britain did not return the remains of their fallen servicemen. In recognition of these sacrifices, the Tomb has served as a place of mourning and a site for reflection on military service. Unidentified remains resulted from poor recordkeeping, the damage that weapons of war inflicted on bodies, or the haste required to bury the dead and mark gravesites.
Through the ages, one of the consequences of warfare has been large numbers of unidentified dead. Unknowns from later wars were added in 19. The neoclassical, white marble sarcophagus stands atop a hill overlooking Washington, D.C., Since 1921, it has provided a final resting place for one of America’s unidentified World War I service members. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is Arlington National Cemetery’s most iconic memorial.
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