America’s Unknown Soldier Comes Home to His Native Soil

For him, our Unknown Soldier, it is all over; the sadness of parting from loved ones, the long ocean voyage, the grind of the training camps, the weary marches to the front, the roar of the barrage and then that last blinding flash of a descending shell which shattered his poor body and left him dead and unknown on the field of battle.

This nameless hero of ours is being borne home with the highest honors of the Nations to sleep forever in the Great National Cemetery at Arlington, Va., as the type and symbol of the thousands of other American Lads similarly slain on the poppy fields of France.  His life snuffed out in the glow of youth with all the future before him, he is a sacrifice to the cause of his country and humanity, as were the unknown French youth who rests beneath the shadow of mighty Arch of Triumph in Paris, and the nameless English boy whose dust now mingles with that of the greatest men of his race under the quiet aisles of Westminster Abbey. 

Those unknown dead of Arlington, of Paris and of London were sons of the common people; the common people, whose composite impulses and sentiments give birth to the sentiments and the policies of their nations.

Interment in Arlington National Cemetery, October 25th to November 9th, 1921

Keystone View Company 

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