A Soldier Known but to God
The hill at Arlington keeps a rigorous silence, broken by white marble and the rhythmic, metallic click of a polished heel. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is a neoclassical sarcophagus of Colorado Yule marble, weathered by the elements and guarded with a precision that verges on the liturgical. It holds the nameless—men whose identities were erased by the "atomizing" force of modern shells or the frantic haste of battlefield burials.
The tradition began with a spray of white roses. In 1921 an American sergeant named Edward Younger was ordered to choose one casket from four identical ones, each exhumed from a French battlefield. He circled the remains several times before laying the flowers on the third, and with that a nameless casualty became a national symbol. The soldier came home aboard the USS Olympia—once Admiral Dewey's flagship—and was interred in soil shipped from France, so that he might rest forever in the earth he had fought for.
The stone is only half of it; the Sentinels are the rest. Since 1937 the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, "The Old Guard," has kept a perpetual vigil, twenty-four hours a day, through hurricanes and blizzards. The number twenty-one governs everything they do, taken from the highest of military honors: twenty-one steps across a black mat, a twenty-one-second pause, then a sharp shift of the rifle to the outside shoulder, so the guard's body always stands between the tomb and any threat.
Later crypts were added for the unidentified dead of subsequent wars, though DNA testing has made the "Unknown" an ever-rarer category. The occupant of the Vietnam crypt was exhumed in the late twentieth century and identified as a downed pilot; his crypt now stands empty, rededicated to everyone still missing. In an age of digital footprints, the Tomb keeps a place for those who left no name at all.