We almost lost the Unknown Soldier?

Gonna give a hat-tip to Jeff LPH for this one. Certainly a bit of history they don’t teach very much, if at all.

We decided to select an Unknown Soldier to represent the many unidentified war dead from WWI. There were certainly many available – by 1921, there were still 1,237 unidentified. The English had selected and interred their Unknown at Westminster Abbey in 1920, as had the French theirs at the Arc de Triomphe the same year.

The task of selecting a body to represent the thousands of still-unknown dead from the Great War was daunting. The United States still had not identified 1,237 dead soldiers, and, according to the U.S. Naval Institute, extraordinary care had to be taken to select a body that would not be identified later.

Four bodies were exhumed from the U.S. cemeteries of Aisne-Marne, Meuse-Argonne, Somme and St. Mihiel. Arriving at the city hall of Chalons-sur-Marne on Oct. 23, French and American soldiers then rearranged the caskets to further obfuscate their origins.

Sgt. Edward Younger was selected, apparently randomly, to make the final choice.

“I took the flowers and advanced to the little temporary shrine through a line of French troops. I entered the door … and stood alone with the dead. … For a moment I hesitated, and said a prayer, inaudible, inarticulate, yet real. Then I looked around. That scene will remain with me forever. Each casket was draped with a beautiful American flag. … I began a slow march around the caskets. Which should it be? Thoughts poured like torrents through my mind. Maybe these buddies had once been my pals. 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?”

When later asked why he had chosen that particular casket, according to the U.S. Naval Institute, Younger replied, “I don’t really know, but something drew me to it.”

The coffin was taken to Le Havre on a special funeral train, where a special hand-selected unit under the command of Capt. Graves Erskine encased it in a wooden box and wrapped the box in  waterproof canvas. A box containing dirt from the French battlefields to line the eventual grave was also shipped. One problem – the selected ship, the USS Olympia (well known due to America’s famous victory at Manilla Bay in 1898) didn’t have a hatch big enough to get the coffin box below. so the case had to be lashed down on deck near the ship’s bow.

One major issue – the Olympia was what was called a “roller” and in heavy seas rolled with the waves more than some other ships…and she hit two storms en route across the Atlantic.

On Halloween morning, six days after leaving port, the Olympia was halfway across the Atlantic when, traveling alone, gale-force winds blustered about the ship.

Twenty-foot seas broke over the Olympia but despite this, one Marine, lashed to the ship’s stanchions so as to not be washed overboard, stood guard over the Unknown Soldier at all times.

Two others remained close by, ready to intercede should the casket begin to shift and pitch like the seas below.

According to the U.S. Naval institute, at the peak of the storm the vessel rolled 39 degrees, leading to anxiety that the ship would capsize.

“The bridge itself was awash half the time,” Erskine later recalled. “And almost as often there was seawater in the wardroom.”

“The agonizing thought came to me: what if the Unknown Soldier — the hero all America awaits to honor — is washed overboard?” he remembered. “I knew that if such a thing happened, I might as well jump over with him.”

The commanding officer, Capt. Henry Lake Wyman, even sought divine intervention and asked Navy Chaplain Lt. Edward Duff to pray for the safety of the vessel as its crew clung helplessly to anything affixed to the ship, watching as the casket broke the waves on the top deck.

Obviously the Olympia eventually  made it, and in 1925 our first Unknown was laid to rest at Arlington where he has remained ever since.

Ultimately laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery in a ceremony attended by President Warren Harding, Vice President Calvin Coolidge, senior government representatives, Medal of Honor recipients and other military groups, the Unknown Soldier has been watched over and guarded — first by a civilian, then by the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Regiment — since 1925.

And Younger?

Visited by Younger during Memorial Day in 1930, the former Army sergeant remarked how he might have “eaten, slept, and fought next to him” and that it was “real nice to get a chance to visit him again.”  Military Times

So you can now also answer the question of “Who has guarded the Unknown Soldier?” with “Civilians and both the Old Guard and the US Marines.”  The Marines on the Olympia certainly deserve to be remembered – they earned it.

Category: We Remember, WWI