The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier One-hundred Years Later
This is the 100th anniversary of the dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. On October 24, 1921, Sgt. Edward F. Younger, approached four identical caskets laid in the city hall of Chalons-sur-Marne in France. Sgt. Younger had, himself, been badly wounded in combat, been highly decorated for valor and received the Distinguished Service Medal. But he was alive, and on this day he had a solumn task. The four caskets before him had each been exhumed, quite at random, on Memorial day, 1921, from four World War I American cemeteries in France. Each contained the remains of a soldier who had been unrecognizable and unknown at the time of his burial. All anyone will ever know about these four bodies is that they were American soldiers and had fallen in “The War to End all Wars.” Younger’s task was both simple and agonizing. He would select one of these caskets for internment in the newly created Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Sgt. Younger moved forward (at what impu