President Biden and scores of military leaders and government officials gathered at Arlington National Cemetery on Thursday to honor the nation’s veterans and pay tribute to the fallen on the 100th anniversary of the Tomb of the Unknowns.
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In sunny fall weather, they gathered as people had 100 years ago, to observe solemn rites that brought the country together to mourn a single anonymous American, and to remember all those who had served.
“Today we pay homage to the unrelenting bravery and dedication that distinguish all those who earned the title ‘American veteran,’ ” Biden said. “To be a veteran is to endure, to survive challenges that most Americans will never know.”
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The president and first lady Jill Biden arrived at the tomb a little before 11:15 a.m.
In 1921, the first soldier of the Tomb of the Unknowns was laid to rest. The memorial was caught on film.
The president saluted as the national anthem was played. He bowed his head and stepped forward to place a ceremonial wreath of red, white and blue flowers before the tomb. A quiet drum roll broke the silence and a bugler sounded taps.
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Earlier, to the strains of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and the roar of aircraft overhead, units of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard marched along a road past the marble sarcophagus that bears the inscription: “Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God.”
Beyond the tomb is the Memorial Amphitheater where, on Nov. 11, 1921, President Warren G. Harding and figures from around the world assembled near the coffin of the unknown soldier from World War I.
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“With all my heart, I wish we might say to the defenders who survive, to mothers who sorrow, to widows and children who mourn, that no such sacrifice shall be asked again,” Harding told the crowd.
Harding’s wish did not come to pass, and Thursday’s ceremonies honored those called on to make further sacrifices.
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Being a veteran is a “badge of courage that unites across all ages, regardless of background,” Biden said after the wreath-laying ceremony.
“Each of our veterans is a link in a proud chain of patriots that has stood to the defense of our country from Bunker Hill to Belleau Wood, Gettysburg and Iwo Jima,” he said as he stood before a huge American flag in the amphitheater.
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He noted the deaths of 7,000 service members in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the wounding of 52,000. This is the cost of war, he said.
There were tributes throughout the region, including a naturalization ceremony for service members in Baltimore, a parade in Virginia Beach, and multiple events on the National Mall in Washington.
The day’s events at Arlington began at 9 a.m. with a procession of military units that traversed the cemetery roads — just as a similar, if vastly larger, procession did in 1921.
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Several marchers were clothed in the garb of soldiers from World Wars I and II, and the Korean War.
The U.S. Army Band, known as “Pershing’s Own” and named for World War I Gen. John J. Pershing, played.
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Army helicopters clattered overhead, and Navy and Air Force fighters roared past.
At 11 a.m., a gunfire salute was heard across the landscape. And white-gloved sentinels stood at the tomb. The president wore a dark blue suit, white shirt and light blue tie. Mindful of the coronavirus, members of his entourage wore masks and maintained social distance.
It was the culmination of several days of ceremonies at Arlington to mark the centennial of the Tomb of the Unknowns.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, long lines of people walked past the tomb — pausing to kneel, pray and salute — as they were permitted for the first time to place flowers where the first unknown soldier, killed in World War I, was laid to rest.
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Over the decades, the tomb would receive three more unknowns from three more wars — World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War — and become a somber national landmark guarded 24 hours a day.
(In 1998, the Vietnam unknown was removed and identified as Air Force 1st Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie.)
The idea for the tomb came from the vast destruction of World War I, which had resulted in tens of thousands of missing or unidentified dead across the battlefields of Europe. (A British war memorial in France bears the names of 72,000 soldiers missing from one battle that went on for five months.)
More than 4,000 Americans were missing in action, and at least 1,600 unidentified dead rested in cemeteries, according to the American Battle Monuments Commission. (The United States did not enter the 1914-1918 war until 1917.)
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The global grief required some kind of solace, said Allison S. Finkelstein, Arlington Cemetery’s senior historian.
The tomb served as a place for “the American people [to] mourn,” she said, “to provide a single grave that’s representative of all of the unidentified … so that a family … can go to the tomb and consider that grave their own.”
The day the Tomb of the Unknown was dedicated
On. Nov. 11, 1920, Britain and France each buried a single unknown soldier to honor all their others. Britain buried its unknown in Westminster Abbey in London. France buried its unknown at the base of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
A month later, Rep. Hamilton Fish III, who had served in combat with the African American 369th Infantry Regiment during the war, proposed legislation for an American Tomb of the Unknown at Arlington.
“The … purpose of this resolution is to bring home the body of an unknown American warrior who … represents no section, creed, or race [but] who typifies … the soul of America,” Fish told fellow members of Congress.
Fredrick Kunkle contributed to this report.