The Unknown Soldier

This Veterans Day is also the 100th Anniversary of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery, just a few miles from my office.  After the horrible carnage of World War I, France established a memorial to its "unknown dead."  It was placed under the Arc de Triumph in Paris.  Great Britain did the same, burying one of its "unknown" inside Westminster Abbey in London.  Both dedications took place on November 11, 1920.

One year later, the U.S. followed suit.  Four bodies of unidentified U.S. military personnel were exhumed from different American military cemeteries in France.  U.S. Army Sgt. Edward F. Younger, a highly decorated veteran of the Great War, selected which of the four would be the Unknown Soldier of World War I. 

On November 11, 1921, a horse-drawn caisson carried the remains across the Potomac River to Arlington Cemetery where they were interred in the Tomb.  All across the country Americans stopped whatever they were doing to observe two minutes of silence.

The back of the Tomb has this inscription, "Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God."

That is the God of the Bible.  The "Creator" that the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence says is the source of our liberty.  In these desperate and dangerous times we must hope and pray that our nation will turn back to Him.