In the autumn of 1921, the U.S. Army faced a difficult choice. Among four identical, flag-draped caskets—each containing the unidentified remains of an American soldier killed in World War I—only one would be laid to rest at the new Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.
It seemed only appropriate that an experienced commissioned officer ought to make the selection. All four men had died in the war and been buried at American cemeteries in France. But when word came that the French military had asked an enlisted man to pick France’s Unknown Soldier, the Americans quickly determined that they would not be one-upped by French egalitarianism on that day. That is how the selection came to be made by Edward Younger, a 23-year-old sergeant and one of the pallbearers who had carried the four caskets under consideration. Younger had survived being knocked unconscious by a shell and later being shot through the left thigh during vicious fighting in World War I. But he later wrote that being told to make this choice, standing alone with the four coffins, left him overwhelmed and numb.
“Maybe these buddies had once been my pals,” Younger wrote in This Week, a syndicated magazine supplement, 15 years later. “Perhaps one of them had fought with me, had befriended me, had possibly shielded me from a bullet that might have put me in his place. Who would even know?”
Younger left roses on the second casket to his right and reported that his duty was complete. The Unknown Soldier traveled that night by train to Paris and westward the following day to Le Havre, where his casket was carried aboard the USS Olympia en route for Arlington. The Unknown Soldier was buried under a marble slab atop a hill overlooking the nation’s capital from across the Potomac River. Among thousands of those who died in the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, and other conflicts, Younger’s choice offered a place to mourn for every parent whose child never returned home from battle.
The tomb soon became a destination for tens of thousands of visitors to pay their respects to America’s war dead. In 1926, military guards were posted to discourage visitors from climbing or stepping on it. The large marble monument familiar to anyone on today’s tours was completed in 1932, and the watch became a 24-hour duty in 1937. Like Younger, the guards today belong to an infantry unit.
Also like Younger, Thomas Iglesias, a specialist, was almost certainly not expecting to become famous just by showing up for work. On Wednesday, Veterans Day, senior officials gathered for the annual observance. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, his wife, and three of his top advisers posed for photographs near the tomb. But, as they departed, the group began talking and someone laughed. Iglesias paused, then did his job. “All visitors will maintain an atmosphere of silence and respect at all times!” Iglesias shouted. A CNN camera captured the moment.
Warnings aren’t unusual at the tomb. A 2022 Army article quotes a tomb guard saying that sentinels issue two or three of them a day, usually to oblivious tourists. It’s another thing entirely to admonish Hegseth and his entourage.
Hegseth’s detractors quickly scolded him for the group’s misbehavior or lauded the young specialist for correcting the behavior of a man who has regularly disparaged members of his department for lack of decorum, be they “fat” generals or bearded soldiers. Others, on Hegseth’s side, chided the soldier for failing to show proper respect to his boss.
Hegseth, at least in this moment, chose not to pick a fight. His press office affirmed the warning as appropriate, and Hegseth awarded Iglesias the Joint Service Commendation Medal.
I didn’t read any grand motive into Iglesias’s assertive correction of Pentagon leadership, because I’ve witnessed the devotion of the tomb guards many times.
In October 2021, I traveled to the town where Younger had made his choice 100 years before, since renamed Châlons-en-Champagne. Active-duty tomb guards, all part of the 3rd Infantry Regiment “Old Guard,” were there with former soldiers who belonged to the Society of the Honor Guard, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. They had joined a 10-day pilgrimage across France.
They gathered in a broad town square, where French and American flags adorned the way to the neoclassical city hall, completed, as it happens, in 1776. Gavin McIlvenna, the society’s president at the time, spoke with me just outside, while visitors filed in to pay their respects in the room where Younger once stood.
“I don’t know how many times I can say this is overwhelming. But it is,” McIlvenna said.
I appreciated his passion for the moment. I also didn’t totally get it at the time.
I initially saw their jobs as honorable but tedious. Walk 21 steps, turn and face the tomb for 21 seconds more. Turn again, shift the rifle to the outside shoulder, count another 21 seconds and walk. During visiting hours, repeat for 30 minutes in the warmer months and an hour in the colder months. After the cemetery closes, each watch lasts two hours. During a 24-hour shift, guards alternate time on the plaza with rest and preparation for their next watch. If the weather is miserable, that’s part of the mission.
[From the November 2023 issue: The patriot]
If any of the tomb guards in France that week ever saw their duty as I once did, they never let on. The Old Guard soldiers spend an average of 18 months at the tomb.
Standing watch on a busy day means inspecting your surroundings, keeping your rifle at the correct angle, and maintaining a steady walk. There is no casual conversation, so guards communicate through scrapes and clicks of the steel plates attached to their shoes. A sentinel scrapes a heel to acknowledge veterans and distinguished guests or strikes the plates together on the inside of his heels to signal to another guard.
The same standards of behavior apply once visitors leave the cemetery for the night, though the solitude provides plenty of time for the soldiers’ introspection. Several sentinels told me that, during the watch, they think about the tomb and all those it honors. An Unknown Soldier has no backstory to limit what others see in him. On those walks in the darkness, he can embody the courage and selflessness of combat or a remembrance of loved ones the guards have lost in their own lives. Many tomb guards have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, while others served as far back as the Vietnam War. Some are never far from friends buried in other sections of the cemetery.
In France, shared devotion brought together guards whose service spanned generations. From Châlons-en-Champagne, they traveled to Paris with other military organizations for a ceremony under the Arc de Triomphe, followed by dinner at the École Militaire.
At dinner, they lived it up and mostly kept the conversation light, while accommodating my interest in their jobs. I remember the look in the eyes of one former tomb guard when he talked about his service. I began to understand that every moment on that walk, and every little detail performed with precision, was an expression of gratitude for a debt that will never be fully repaid. And so it continues, uninterrupted.
[Read: The inside story of what happened at Stars and Stripes]
The World War I Unknown Soldier would later be joined by unidentified service members from World War II and the Korean War, buried in separate crypts beside his tomb. But scientific advances have made future unknown burials very unlikely in the U.S. armed forces. In 1998, the Vietnam Unknown was identified as First Lieutenant Michael J. Blassie, an Air Force pilot shot down in 1972. The Vietnam Unknown’s crypt has been kept empty since Blassie’s remains were exhumed.
DNA-based evidence can restore a fallen soldier’s identity. But people still have to choose to remember them. Edward Younger never forgot the Unknown Soldier he picked. He traveled to Arlington in 1930, telling The Washington Post that it was “real nice to get a chance to visit him again.” Twelve years later, Younger himself was laid to rest at the national cemetery.
Younger described himself and his comrades as just “good, average soldiers.” He always imagined the man in the tomb to be a lot like him. That’s why the unidentified man in that tomb is paradoxically so easy to identify with. Few of us will be remembered by name for long. But what good, average people accomplish can outlast the memory of any one of them.
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