The funeral proper took place in the amphitheatre of the Arlington National Cemetery. The white marble colonnaded outdoor auditorium has all the qualities of a fully realized Beaux-Arts student drawing and was, in fact, the creation of one of the leading French-trained American firms, Carrere and Hastings. The liturgy used was a modified form of the Protestant service. The Soldier was awarded the country’s highest honour for combat bravery, the Congressional Medal of Honor, as well as many foreign military decorations. These unfounded assumptions asserted the scripted and controlled effects sought by the Army and their implausibility seems to have bothered very few
beside Dos Passos. But even in context of a highly formal setting and before the very select audience, some unexpected shifts and reshuffling still took place.
As army records reveal, an invitation to the funeral was highly sought-after. A good part of the invited dignitaries were not, however, able to avail themselves of their privilege. The unexpectedly large crowd, estimated to number 100,000, streaming on foot over the only open bridge to Virginia defeated the traffic control measures put in place. In the ensuing chaos, many of the car-borne official guests did not reach the cemetery at all.48 The general public, to the contrary, was not only able to observe those parts of the ceremony that took place outside of the amphitheatre from the hilltops of the cemetery, but to hear what went on inside it, thanks to what was only the second use of amplification for a national ceremony (it was also broadcast to three cities in what was only the second use of radio for a national event). When the president spontaneously added the Lord’s Prayer to his formal oration, their intonation of the prayer made those outside the amphitheatre momentarily part of the congregation and, of course, their voices drowned out those of the invited audience.49 And, the hilly landscape of the cemetery afforded the general public a view of the graveside entombment itself, for it was outside the amphitheatre.
The two-minute silence (often capitalized in the aftermath of the war) was declared precisely for the stroke of noon and observed nationally. For the 100,000 people gathered on the hills of Arlington, the disruption occasioned by the silence was all the more palpable because it followed the
11.4
Overhead view of ceremonies at the burial of the Unknown Soldier, 11 November 1921.
Arlington Memorial Amphitheater, Carrere and Hastings, 1915-20. The Gold Star (bereaved) mothers, right of the grave site; Chief Plenty Coups, coup stick raised, left of the grave site
11.5
View of the burial of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery, 11 November 1921. Arlington Memorial Amphitheater, Carrere and Hastings, 1915-20. After the Last Salute, the crowd engulfs the gravesite
astonishingly audible sounds that had preceded it. The official party then moved to the graveside, where they were joined by individuals with actual or possible personal attachments to the Unknown Soldier, two Gold Star mothers and Fish. When they stepped into the place of the official mourners, protocol and hierarchy were overridden. Their grouping was then further disturbed by the presence of a racial outsider, the elderly Crow Chief Plenty Coups, who offered the Soldier a war bonnet and coup stick and, pronouncing the last words of the ceremony, conveyed the Soldier to his grave as if he were a native American. The addition of a possible mother and an ‘ordinary’ veteran had reasserted the Soldier’s identity as son and soldier, replacing that of the exceptional hero he had acquired during the funeral proper. The national 21-gun salute followed, and before the smoke could disperse, the crowd had engulfed the grave, displacing the remaining official guests.50