Have I told you about WWI? The Unknown Soldier.
Today marks 103 years since the armistice ending World War I, but in the United States it also marks another important anniversary: 100 years since the internment of the Unknown Soldier. Throughout the history of warfare, identification of fallen soldiers has been difficult; but the nature of the First World War, with its mechanized capacity for mass slaughter, brought this difficulty to a whole new level. Despite the overwhelming casualties of other nations, Secretary of War Newton Baker was optimistic about identification when the U.S. joined WWI, promising that the body of every American soldier who died overseas would be repatriated to the U.S. for burial. This, of course, didn’t work out, and the U.S. ended up employing a mixed repatriation policy after the war.
When the war ended, all the participants faced the question of how to commemorate the countless unidentified dead. The idea for a tomb representing all unidentified soldiers originated in Britain, and quickly caught on internationally. Today there is a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in almost every country that participated in WWI, and other tombs to represent Unknowns from later wars in many other countries. However, this was far from the only way nations commemorated the sacrifices of WWI; below, find a few other notable examples.
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Washington, D.C., U.S.A. Our first Unknown was a soldier of WWI and was entombed on November 11, 1921. Other Unknowns have since joined him in representing those lost in more recent conflicts. Unknowns from WWII and the Korean War are also entombed in the monument, and there is an empty tomb for an Unknown from the Vietnam War. This tomb was originally filled, but that Unknown was later identified, exhumed, and reinterred elsewhere according to the wishes of his family.
Douaumont Ossuary, Verdun, France. On the site of the longest battle in military history, the Ossuary contains the unidentified remains of some 130,000 soldiers, both German and French. It is surrounded by 15,000 graves of identified French soldiers, and tens of thousands more unmarked graves throughout the battlefield itself, which is a protected historic site.
The Menin Gate, Ypres, Belgium. This memorial stands at the road along which thousands of Allied troops marched on their way to fight in three successive battles at Ypres. The gate is inscribed with the names of over 54,000 British, Australian, Canadian, Indian, and South African soldiers who were killed on the Ypres Salient and lie in unknown graves.
Sacrario Militare Di Redipuglia, Monte Sei Busi, Italy. Built and inaugurated under Mussolini, this memorial was intended both to commemorate the dead and to honor Italian military might. Within the memorial, which is itself an ossuary, are contained the remains of some 100,000 Italian soldiers killed during the twelve battles of the Isonzo.
