‘The Unknowns’ Review: Fallen Sons, Unforgotten Eight hand-picked ‘Body Bearers’ carried the coffin of the Unknown Soldier of World War I By Matthew J. Davenport
In a grand ceremony on Nov. 11, 1920, an unknown French soldier from World War I was buried beneath the Arc de Triomphe. That same day, the British entombed their own unknown soldier with similar honors in Westminster Abbey.
Other European nations followed, but the United States, having lost 116,516 doughboys in 19 months of fighting—and with more than 2,000 unidentified Americans still buried in France—had no plans for the same.
It was not until the next month that Hamilton Fish, a New York congressman who had served in combat on the Western Front, introduced a bill providing for the repatriation of “a body of an unknown American killed on the battlefields of France, and for burial of the remains with appropriate ceremonies.” Congress passed Fish’s Public Resolution 67, and on his last day in office President Woodrow Wilson signed it.
How that decision led to the selection of one American soldier, an interment ceremony in Washington, D.C., commensurate to a state funeral, and ultimately to the honor the nation bestows upon the present-day Tomb of the Unknowns, is the fascinating history that Patrick K. O’Donnell explores in “The Unknowns.”
The Unknowns
By Patrick K. O’Donnell
Atlantic Monthly Press, 362 pages, $27
As with the French and British ceremonies, the entombment of America’s Unknown Soldier was set for the anniversary of the Armistice, in remembrance of when the world war had ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
Mr. O’Donnell first reminds us of the import that the day bore for those who lived through it, particularly the soldiers. One doughboy recalled: “The thunder of the guns ceased, and the men, unable to speak, clasped hands in silence.” Another, having endured the racket of artillery explosions and machine-gun fire for months, noted that he could hear his watch ticking the seconds following 11 a.m.
Approximately two million American servicemen witnessed the moment the guns fell silent along the Western Front, and “The Unknowns” underscores how it met each man in a different place and a different way. We learn that 31-year-old First Sgt. Louis Razga was in a field hospital, recovering from a mustard-gas attack that his howitzer battery had endured just two days before. Sgt. James Dell of the 15th Field Artillery, 42, was with his battery of 75mm guns supporting the Marines in their assault on German positions across the Meuse River, a fight that had continued right up until the 11th hour. And 32-year-old James Delaney, a sailor from Boston, was in his 15th month in a prisoner-of-war camp in Brandenburg, Germany, reduced to a “walking scarecrow,” in Mr. O’Donnell’s words, by mistreatment and malnutrition. CONTINUE AT SITE
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