Why does the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier have a guard? It comes down to respect. In March 1926, the Evening Star reported that President Coolidge favored an armed guard at the Tomb after he was told how visitors were treating it: sitting on it, eating lunch on it and throwing paper on it.
The disrespect had been on the front page for months. On Sept. 25, 1925, the Washington Daily News put a photo on its front page of two young visitors sitting on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier so they could have their picture taken. The caption under it didn’t hold back (that “snap-shop” is the paper’s typo, not ours):
Unsuspecting, these tourists illustrated the lack of respect which visitors habitually show for the tomb of America’s Unknown Soldier. The two boys are shown negligently using the tomb as a convenient seat for a camera snap-shop of themselves.
If you’ve ever watched a sentinel walk his post at Arlington, that picture is hard to look at. In 1925 there was no soldier guarding the Tomb at all, just one civilian watchman. The first military guard came in 1926, after veterans got angry enough about scenes like this one to take the problem all the way to the White House.
Why the Tomb Mattered
To see why that photo stung, go back to Nov. 11, 1921, the day America’s Unknown Soldier was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Here’s how the Evening Star opened its front-page story:
America’s unknown soldier, beloved of her hundred million people and typifying all of her sons who gave their lives in the world war, was laid to rest today at Arlington national cemetery
He had been chosen in France. According to an Associated Press dispatch, four unidentified American dead were brought to the city hall at Chalons for the choosing. Each came from a different American cemetery in France: Romagne, Triaucourt, Bony and Belleau Wood.
The Army’s history of the Tomb says Sgt. Edward Younger of the 50th Infantry made the choice on Oct. 24, 1921, by laying a spray of white roses on one of the four caskets. From there the Unknown made the long trip home to Washington.
Then he was carried across the Potomac to Arlington for the funeral on Nov. 11, 1921.
At the burial service in the Memorial Amphitheater, President Harding pinned the Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross on the casket. Secretary of War Weeks spelled out what made this soldier different:
“We are gathered,” said the Secretary, “not to mourn the passing of a great general, but an unknown soldier of the republic, who fought to sustain a great cause, for which he gave his life. Whether he came from the north, the south, the east or the west, we do not know. Neither do we know his name, his lineage or any other fact relating to his life or death, but we do know that he was a typical American, who responded to his country’s call, and that he now sleeps with the heroes.
That was the whole point. Nobody knew who he was, so he could stand for every American who gave his life in the war.
“Many People Just Think It’s a Slab of Rock”
So how did a couple of boys end up using his grave as a bench? Part of the answer is what the Tomb looked like back then. It was a low, flat slab in front of the Memorial Amphitheater, with nothing on it to say it was a tomb.
The Daily News talked to the one man assigned to watch it, a civilian guard named George Thompson. He wasn’t in uniform, and he had to keep an eye on the whole marble amphitheater too.
“I do the best I can,” George Thompson, the guard, asserts. “But you can see what a task it is to keep watch over the entire place.
Thompson told the paper exactly what the trouble was:
“The trouble is tourists really don’t know the tomb when they see it. It has never been finished. There is no tablet to mark it as a tomb. Many people just think it’s a slab of rock.
There had never been any kind of tablet, Thompson said. Once they tried a wooden panel in front of it instead, and people made so much fun of the thing that it had to come down.
He also wished he could use a whistle to warn off people climbing on top of the Tomb, but as he put it, “it seems that a whistle would be undignified.” Think about that for a second … the whistle was too undignified, but people climbing on the Unknown Soldier’s grave apparently wasn’t.
The rest of the Daily News story reads like a list of complaints:
Sightseers smoke cigarets leaning against the tomb. Tourists have their photographs snapped standing upon its flat top. Children romp upon it.
The paper saved its sharpest line for what the Unknown Soldier got instead:
But match sticks, banana peelings and cigar butts for the Unknown Soldier who, as a symbol of America’s sacrifice in the fields of France, sleeps here in an unfinished tomb in Arlington cemetery on the southern shore of the Potomac.
“Frivolous Desecrations” and “Picnic Parties”
People started to push back, and by then the Secretary of War was no longer Weeks but Davis. On Oct. 23, 1925, women of the American Women’s Legion took a protest over the daily desecration of the grave to Davis, the Daily News reported. Davis promised to look into it, according to the paper, but he doubted the Army could spare a soldier.
On Nov. 27, 1925, the Daily News ran an editorial arguing for a guard of honor kept at the Tomb at all times.
By March 1926 the veterans were fired up. On Thursday night, March 4, 1926, a veterans’ group, the President’s Own Garrison No. 104 of the Army and Navy Union, adopted a resolution. According to the Washington Post, it denounced the “continued frivolous desecrations of the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.”
The American Legion was angry too, and the Post explained why, looking back to the Legion’s last national convention:
However at the last convention of the American Legion in Omaha officials were angered because of reports that picnic parties have been in the habit of eating their lunches on the very tomb. At that time it was decided that a bill which would ensure a permanent guard ought to be pressed.
Can you imagine picnic parties eating lunch on the grave of the Unknown Soldier? The Post said the complaints went well beyond the Legion, too:
There has been a singular lack of reverence and this has added to the movement to have the whole spot chained off so that an approach to the very side of the tomb could be prevented.
Had anybody actually argued against posting a soldier there? The Post pointed to two things that had been said. One was that the Tomb sat well inside Arlington, so it couldn’t be reached at night and seemed perfectly safe by day. The other, raised in military circles, was that a guard would cost too much.
The Legion Goes to the White House
Rep. Allen J. Furlow of Minnesota drafted a measure for a permanent guard. The Post said it called for a guard “equipped as for field service during the world war” on duty from sunrise to sunset. Each evening, just before the guard was dismissed, a bugler would sound taps. The Evening Star’s account of Furlow’s resolution added a chain barrier around the Tomb.
On March 8, 1926, an American Legion committee headed by John Thomas Taylor went to see President Coolidge with Furlow. They asked him to back Furlow’s measure, and the Evening Star reported what they told him:
He was told that it is not uncommon for visitors to sit upon this shrine and sometimes eat their lunches on it and throw paper and debris carelessly about.
Coolidge didn’t need much convincing. According to his callers, he told them a law wasn’t necessary, and “that if the legion wanted this done he would see that it was done.”
On March 9, 1926, the Star weighed in with an editorial that added a few more sins to the list:
It is said that some persons use the flat tomb as a seat and that some spread lunches on it. A number of men do not come to attention, do not salute or do not remove their hats at the tomb. Some pilgrim parties are too gay, and laughter, conversation and badinage go unrestrained.
Badinage! I love that word.
7:30 a.m., March 25, 1926
Things moved quickly after the White House visit. On March 24, 1926, the Daily News reported that Secretary of War Davis had ordered an armed guard of one soldier for the Tomb. He would be on duty until 5 p.m., when the cemetery closed. The Star had guessed the guard would come from the garrison at nearby Fort Myer.
At 7:30 the next morning, March 25, 1926, the first military guard went on post at the Tomb by special order of the War Department. That was more than four years after the Unknown was buried. The Star ran a Wide World photo the following day with a caption that opened “GUARD PROTECTS TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER,” and made this promise:
Night and day, the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the immediate vicinity in Arlington National Cemetery will be under the watchful eyes of a soldier.
That was a little ahead of itself. The 1926 guard was a daytime job, which fits both Furlow’s sunrise-to-sunset plan and the Daily News report of a soldier on duty until closing time.
From Daylight to Around the Clock
The Tomb itself changed, too. According to the Army’s history of the Tomb, Congress authorized its completion on July 3, 1926, and the finished Tomb was unveiled on April 9, 1932.
The watch grew longer. The Army’s history of the Tomb says the guard went to 24 hours a day effective July 1, 1937. The Society of the Honor Guard, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, also says the Tomb has been guarded around the clock since 1937. We couldn’t find a newspaper story on the order itself.
The same Army history says soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, “The Old Guard,” have guarded the Tomb since April 6, 1948.
Did a soldier on post fix everything? Not according to one visitor. In October 1951 a reader from Alexandria wrote to the Washington Post about what he saw at the Tomb:
The sentry on duty was made a joke of, while people clambered all over the “hallowed ground” which he is supposed to be protecting. I saw no one actually sitting on the tomb itself having his picture taken, but I suppose it has been done by more than one nincompoop.
He suggested roping off the area.
21 Steps
The sentinel’s walk is its own kind of answer to all of this. According to the Society of the Honor Guard, sentinels walk 21 steps and then face the Tomb for 21 seconds at each end of the walk, a nod to the 21-gun salute.
It’s a long way from Sept. 25, 1925, when the Daily News caught two boys using the Tomb as a seat for a snapshot.
Lost Washington stories, in your inbox.
The newest story, plus a few from the archive.
Free. Unsubscribe anytime.
AI helped research and write this story. Here’s how we use AI.Suggest a correction
